MANSFIELD – Mansfield Senior and Madison first played football against one another way back in 1933, the same year new President Franklin Roosevelt rolled out his New Deal initiatives.
It’s unlikely anyone in the stands at Arlin Field on Friday night will recall that titanic struggle, a lopsided 33-6 win by Mansfield Senior.
It’s unlikely Mansfield Senior coach Chioke Bradley and Sean Conway, his counterpart at Madison, recall the second game between the two schools in 1935, another lopsided 38-6 Mansfield Senior victory.
And it’s for certain players on this year’s teams don’t care one whit about those two games, the one-sidedness of which may have led to a 32-year hiatus between the two before the series resumed in 1968. History is often wasted on the young.
But that doesn’t mean today’s stars like Jalen Rose and Chek Washington of Mansfield and Madison’s Kalvin Gordon and Juwan Howard don’t plan on making some history of their own Friday night.
One bit of recent history that Bradley, Rose and Washington hope to erase Friday night is the bitter memory of the 34-0 blistering Madison laid on the Tygers in 2012 at Ram Field. Given the fact Mansfield Senior is 9-0 for the first time in school history and the Rams are at mired at 3-6, it seems clear the Tygers are capable of rewriting last year’s script.
But there are no guarantees in this long cross-town rivalry. For example, who would have been brave enough to forecast last year’s shellacking between two teams that entered the game with identical 8-1 records? The fact is, if history is indeed any kind of a teacher, both of these teams have to be ready by Friday at 7 p.m. to expect the unexpected.
In 1933, no one knew what to expect. Senior, who had been playing football since 1899, was a Class A team in the midst of a 38-game unbeaten streak. Madison, who started football in 1926, was a Class B team that hadn’t lost in 18 straight games. The Madison Ramblers, as the team was then known, led 6-0 at halftime and had stunned Senior to that point. But Senior picked off a pass in the third quarter and drove 60 yards for a TD. That swung all of the momentum for the Tygers, who rambled to the easy win.
Fast forward to 1968 as more than 5,000 fans packed Ram Field to see a game tied 6-6 at halftime. But Madison fumbled at its own 23 midway through the fourth quarter. The Tygers recovered and scored the game winner in a 13-6 victory.
The game in 1987, a 33-30 Tygers victory, was one the wildest in series history. Madison led 18-6 at halftime and seemed in control. The defenses were both helpless in the second half and Senior won it on a TD pass with just 16 seconds left to play.
Madison claimed some historical glory of its own in 1988. The Rams built a 13-0 halftime lead before Senior battled back to tie it. But Madison was successful on a 41-yard field goal with 16 seconds left, giving the Rams the win and a decade of momentum – winning nine of the next 10 games in the series.
Perhaps two of the best games in the long series came in 1992 and 1993.
Madison topped Senior 24-14 in 1992 before a crowd of about 8,000 people, led by Nate Whitcomb and Rob Whitfield. The Rams put the finishing touches on a 10-0 season the following week and advanced to the playoffs for the second time in three years. The Tygers finished the season at 7-3.
The Tygers bounced back to win 27-26 in 1993 as Senior coach Stan Jefferson made his debut in the series. The Tygers entered the game 6-1 while the Rams were 6-2. Madison had won 18 straight Ohio Heartland Conference games and had won the league title four years in a row. Before a near capacity Arlin Field crowd, Tyger stars Effie James, Ali Grose, Ellery Bradford and Ken Fairchild earned the victory. In a game filled with huge plays, it was a 13-yard TD pass from James to Fairchild with 21 seconds left that sealed the win.
This rivalry has produced some momentous moments, amazing plays and fantastic finishes. There is no guarantee more of that will be on display Friday night. But historically speaking, the odds are in favor of it.
