Overtime

After a long fall of constant running around, and two enjoyable weeks on the New Canaan High School football beat, I’m, well, beat.

Thus, as of typing the last word to my column on the Rams’ 28-0 thrashing of East Lyme in yesterday’s Class MM final, I am on vacation until a week from Monday.

I was not planning on updating the blog until then.

EXCEPT…..

I met New Canaan quarterback Turner Baty’s parents, Kathleen and Greg, before yesterday’s games. They obviously have not been happy about the rumors that have been swirling around that their son might move back to Florida now that the season is over. Both agreed to be interviewed tomorrow morning so that their voices could be heard about the situation.

Unless they change their minds, I will have a post up sometime tomorrow after I talk to them.

AND…

We are ironing out the final details about the upcoming introduction of the BlueStreak-Overtime FCIAC Player of the Week award, which will start sometime in the next two weeks. Readers will be able to nominate candidates, along with coaches, athletic directors and media members within our chain. If we have everything set during this week I will post it.

Otherwise, thanks for following this fall and all the positive feedback. There will again be guest bloggers during the winter. If there is anything new you would like to see here, please send along a comment or suggestion and I will consider it.

Have a good week!

Turner Baty never played a football game in the snow before this afternoon.

He might want to try it more often. Baty was outstanding today, completing 18 of 31 passes for 222 yards and four touchdowns to lead New Canaan to its fourth straight title, a 28-0 rout of East Lyme.

Baty was named the most valuable player of the game, hitting Cody Newton for the first three scores and Willie Ouellette for the last.

I caught up with Turner in the boisterous New Canaan locker room after the game, when he discussed his performance and his team’s.

The big news in New Canaan right now is tomorrow afternoon’s CIAC Class MM final against East Lyme and the Rams’ attempt at winning a fourth straight state title.

Running a close second has been the growing talk that Turner Baty, the quarterback who transferred to New Canaan from Florida the week before the season, is going to return to Florida sometime soon after tomorrow’s game.

When I spoke to Chris “Mad Dog” Russo Monday afternoon about something else, the New Canaan resident brought up the subject. Tony Pavia, the principal at the school, initiated a conversation about it in the pressbox during the Rams’ state semifinal game on Tuesday.

The two people who are getting the biggest hits right now are Lou Marinelli, the Rams’ coach, and Terry Hanratty, the former Notre Dame and Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, whose son, Conor, is a highly touted offensive tackle on the team and a top college recruit.

I just got off the phone with both of them.

First an overview of the situation. Baty lived in California, moved to Florida earlier this year, and then to New Canaan. And that has prompted talk that New Canaan, Marinelli and Hanratty, who said he was introduced to Baty’s father, Greg, a former NFL tight end, through a mutual contact several months ago, were part of a recruiting scheme.

Marinelli has been at New Canaan 29 years and is about to coach in his 10th state final and seventh this decade. He won his 250th career game on Thanksgiving. His track record is one of professionalism and integrity. I would find it nearly impossible to believe he would damage his reputation by bringing in a hired gun. He already had a good quarterback in Willie Ouellette and was not in need of a starter. I can’t believe he would have gone out and found one even if he did.

There was another quarterback from Arkansas earlier this year who moved to New Canaan and took part in spring practice. He ended up moving back to Arkansas because he was a fish out of water in a faster-paced town from which he was accustomed.

“For 28 years up to this point I’ve never had to deal with anything like this,” Marinelli said. “At this point I’m going to start recruiting? All I do is my best to put the best football team on the field. I can’t control what people say. My reputation is not built on wins, but helping kids.”

Hanratty, at least based on comments made on this blog, is getting the most criticism. He said his relationship with Greg Baty developed through someone who knew that both men had sons who are top college recruits. When I asked him about his role, if any, in helping Turner coming to New Canaan, Hanratty said the Batys were not happy in Florida and looking for another place to move to and inquired about New Canaan.

“Until you know the whole story, it’s very difficult to make an opinion,” Hanratty said. “This was a Baty family move, not a Turner Baty move. They also have two other kids, and I told them how outstanding the athletics and academics are here.”

I can also tell you this: Pavia and New Canaan athletic director Jay Egan would never sign off on having an athlete attend their school under the alleged circumstances.

If Baty does indeed move sometime after the season, it is going to be a public relations nightmare for everyone involved. No one will come out of this looking good. Marinelli, Hanratty, Egan and Pavia are going to be perceived as having been complicit in bringing in a football player to help win games.

But there would be another loser no one is talking about: Turner Baty. If I was a college coach recruiting him, one of my first questions would be “You moved from California, to Florida, to Connecticut and back to Florida all within a year. Why should I believe you are going to stay here?”

And while I expect this situation to be viewed from a cynicial prism, if Baty ends up moving, it is just as possible he will have lied about his situation and that a lot of innocent people were duped.

Right now all the talk about Baty’s departure is a rumor, albeit one running wild. If New Canaan wins tomorrow, there is going to be a lot of celebrating.

If Baty leaves town sometime thereafter, those cheers are going to turn to angry cries. And, either by perception or fact, there will be no winners.

If the Staples High School football team defeats Cheshire on Saturday, it will hit a rare quinella: only the fifth time that one school has won a state championship in football and boys soccer during the same fall season.

The feat, according to CIAC information guru Matt Fischer, has only been achieved twice on the Class LL level, most recently by Glastonbury in 1989. Ridgefield also did it back in 1983, though its soccer team played in what was then the equivalent of the Class L level.

New Canaan did it most recently in 2006, on the Class L level (and the first of what the Rams hope will be a fourth straight championship on Saturday). The only other school to achieve it was Newtown, in 1990, which won the football title in Class L and soccer in Class MM.

Fans of the New Canaan and Staples High School football teams will be able to watch both on Saturday in the state finals.

The Rams (10-1) will be facing East Lyme (10-1) at 2 p.m. at Bunnell High School. The Wreckers (12-0) will attempt to finish an unbeaten season and secure the No. 1 ranking in the state against Cheshire (10-1) at West Haven High School at 7 p.m. in the Class LL final.

St. Joseph (9-2) will kick off a doubleheader at West Haven when it faces Montville (10-1) at 2 p.m. in the Class SS title game

In other finals: Hyde and Northwest Catholic will meet in Class S at 2 p.m. at Municipal Stadium in Waterbury, Bethel will face Berlin in Class M at Municipal Stadium at 7 p.m. and Notre Dame-West Haven and Pomperaug will battle in Class L at Shelton High School at 2 p.m.

While the upstate football powers like to stick out their chests, there are now 12 teams still alive to play in Saturday’s state championship games. And a quarter of the field comes from the FCIAC, which went 3-0 last night.

New Canaan High School has been struggling of late and that was again the case when it escaped with a 14-13 win over unheralded St. Paul on a failed two-point conversion in the final minute. (Here’s my column on the game as well.)

Staples, considered by many a prime upset candidate, instead reinforced for any skeptics that it is the No. 1 team in the state until proven otherwise with an impressive 31-28 win over Xavier.

And in perhaps the biggest surprise, due more to the margin than the outcome, St. Joseph routed Holy Cross, 56-7.

Considering that FCIAC runner-up Bridgeport Central and Greenwich, which lost to the league’s three best teams by a total of four points, failed to qualify for the Class LL Tournament, it has been a pretty good football season for the conference.

The hits keep on coming for King running back Silas Redd, who was just named one of six finalists for the U.S. Army Player of the Year Award, considered one of high school football’s highest honors.

The U.S. Army Player of the Year award is given to the nation’s most outstanding senior high school football player participating in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl. The finalists were narrowed down from an original group of 16 nominees.

The U.S. Army Player of the Year will be crowned during the U.S. Army Awards Dinner on January 9, in San Antonio, where the winner will be presented with the Ken Hall Trophy, modeled after Ken “Sugar Land Express” Hall, high school football’s all-time leading rusher.

“It’s a excellent honor to even be nominated,” Redd, who will be attending Penn State, said this afternoon. “I’m looking forward to going down there and representing Connecticut football.”

Past U.S. Army Player of the Year winners include: 2001-Kevin Jones (Chicago Bears); 2002-Lorenzo Booker (Miami Dolphins); 2003-Chris Leak (Montreal Alouettes); 2004-Adrian Peterson (Minnesota Vikings); 2005-Ryan Perrilloux (Jacksonville State); 2006-Mitch Mustain (USC); 2007-Jimmy Clausen (Notre Dame), 2008-Terrelle Pryor (Ohio State) and 2009-Bryce Brown (Tennessee).

Joining Redd as this year’s finalists are Dillon Baxter, a running back from San Diego; Seantrel Henderson, an offensive lineman from Minnesota; Marcus Lattimore, a running back from South Carolina; Ronald Powell, a defensive lineman from California; and Kyle Prater, a wide receiver from Illinois.

The high school football season has reached the homestretch, with just five more days and two rounds of state football games to go.

There will be 12 semifinal contests in all six classes tonight, and if you can’t make it out to one of the sites, you can log on to the blog tonight and get all the scoring updates and any other breaking news as it happens.

Come back around 5:30 tonight, an hour before kickoffs, and keep track of all the action from the pregame to the postgame.