California’s High School Football Powerhouses Feed the College Game
The New York Times
St. John Bosco and Mater Dei, 24 miles apart in Southern California, don’t just funnel players to the top college teams. Increasingly, they resemble them.
BELLFLOWER, Calif. — The scent of seared carne asada wafted through the parking lot on a Friday evening last month at St. John Bosco High, an all-boys school tucked in the southeast corner of Los Angeles County.
An overflow crowd of 6,000 — some hanging over railings, others sitting on $75 end zone bar stools with table service — packed into Panish Stadium, a $7.2 million football stadium with a state-of-the-art video board. A machine spewed fog, lights flashed and a D.J. cranked Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” as the home team, in its glittering metallic gold helmets, charged through an inflatable tunnel and onto the field.
All of it was the preamble to another spectacle: a clash between two teams, St. John Bosco and Santa Ana Mater Dei, that are making high school football look more and more like the Division I college game.
