Paterson's Thanksgiving high school football game won't be played in 2026

The Paterson Thanksgiving Day football game between Kennedy and Eastside will not be played in 2026.

“As of now, there is no game,” longtime Eastside athletic director TJ Hill said Feb. 2. “I don’t know what may happen. It’s one of those things where you want to keep the tradition alive, but I just don’t see it.”

The two Paterson schools have met 101 times in the annual Turkey Bowl match-up, but a long list of factors have combined to end the annual meeting.

Chief among them is Kennedy dropping into the Super Football Conference’s Ivy Division, a division created to help struggling programs restore participation numbers and competitiveness.

In exchange for a schedule exclusively against teams in similar situations, Ivy Division teams forfeit the chance to qualify for the NJSIAA state playoffs. By SFC rules, Ivy teams are not allowed to play “mainstream” SFC teams, such as Eastside.

Kennedy finished 0-9 last season under first-year coach Jarrod Rogers, who was officially hired just before the season began, and scored only 26 points. The Knights lost to Eastside, 52-0, on Thanksgiving. Eastside finished 3-8.

“Things change and teams go in different directions and sometimes those long-standing games just don’t work for one or both teams anymore,” SFC President/Clifton athletic director Tom Mullahey said. “The goal of the Ivy is to get you back in mainstream and we have seen teams do that.”

There is a precedent for Ivy League teams to play mainstream SFC teams on Thanksgiving, though.

Tenafly and Dumont have both spent time in the Ivy Division, but have maintained their Thanksgiving Day rivalry because, technically, the game occurs after the end of the regular season. In athletic director terms, it’s a ‘pick up’ game added on by mutual agreement.

But in Paterson, the desire to play on Thanksgiving has waned. The New Jersey high school football season starts earlier than ever (Aug. 27 is the first day of games in 2026) and the regular season ends earlier than ever (the last regular-season weekend is Oct. 23-24 in 2026), meaning teams that don’t reach the playoffs are done before Halloween.

Hill pointed out how hard it is to keep players and coaches invested when there is such a long break in between games.

“The last two years we were a little below average. And we didn’t have any meaningful games after Halloween," Hill said. “It’s very difficult for kids to be engaged, not having a successful season.”

Could the rivalry move to Labor Day?

The end of the Kennedy-Eastside Turkey Day game means the end of Thanksgiving football in Passaic County. Clifton ended its longstanding Thanksgiving game against Passaic in 2019 after 92 meetings, and the teams now meet in the regular season.

“Speaking from experience, when we had Thanksgiving and we weren’t having success, that was a long month,” Mullahey said. “The season starts so early, you can have two games before Labor Day now. To get to Thanksgiving is a lot to ask of athletes, coaches and trainers and I think a lot of these games have lost their luster.”

Hill said there have been plans in the works to shift the Kennedy-Eastside game to an earlier week in the season, perhaps the centerpiece of a Labor Day festival, but that conversation stalled with Kennedy’s move to the Ivy.

He said it would have been an Eastside home game in 2026 and he was already working on some ancillary celebrations to make it a big event.

“I have been trying to start a new tradition and that way our community still has the game,” Hill said.

The two teams could meet in a scrimmage on Labor Day – a game that wouldn’t officially count – but that also comes with issues. In 2026, Labor Day is actually the second week of the football season and each team would only have seven more weeks to play.

All sides agree that it’s still a fluid situation, but don’t see a clear option.

The only remaining Thanksgiving games left in North Jersey are Hackensack-Teaneck and Dumont-Tenafly, both in Bergen County.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson NJ Thanksgiving high school football game ending