Glendale Community College football will have new Metro home

While the Glendale Community College football team prepares for the 2016 season much the same way it has for previous campaigns, there will certainly be quite a few changes this fall.

The Southern California Football Assn. announced Thursday afternoon that the Vaqueros would be moving from the American Division Pacific League, where they finished as high as second place in 2014, to the newly formed Metro League of the now three-league American Division.

In the Pacific League, Glendale competed with Antelope Valley, Los Angeles Pierce, Los Angeles Valley, Los Angeles Southwest, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica and West Los Angeles colleges.

In the new Metro League, the Vaqueros will join with former conference stalwarts L.A. Southwest and West L.A. and will welcome a whole new batch of squads in nearby foe Pasadena City, East Los Angeles, Compton and Santa Ana.

Pasadena and Santa Ana were two of the catalysts for change as the National Division teams were moved down to the American Division along with Citrus College of Glendora and Allan Hancock of Santa Maria.

Glendale Coach John Rome, a member of the SCFA competition committee, supported the move and was particularly sympathetic for teams leaving the tougher National Division.

“I welcome any program that is moving down because it is having problems competing at another level,” Rome said. “Listen, this is a two-year process and we’ll see how it goes in two years. For now, these moves make sense and they help those schools.”

When Pasadena and Glendale square of this fall at a time and place still to be decided, that game will mark the first meeting by the two schools separated by only 10 miles since Sept. 3, 2011, when the Lancers defeated the Vaqueros, 49-28.

Area interest was particularly high for that game, which had an attendance of more than 2,000, greater than three times the crowd of any other Vaqueros road or home game that season.

Maybe the biggest lift for Rome and for the rest the American Division was the elevation of five-time Pacific League champion Santa Monica to the National Division.

“We wish them the best,” Rome quipped. “But in all honesty, they just had a huge advantage over teams in the American Division. They had 112 players and a huge amount from out of state. They fit well in the National Division.”

Outside of the changes, the more formidable National Division will remain a three-league division with teams representing the North, Central and South leagues.

The American Division will now have three leagues instead of two with the Metro joining the already established Mountain and Pacific leagues.

Outside of the six Metro League games, Glendale will face four squads from the Mountain and Pacific leagues with squads ranging in areas from San Diego to Santa Maria to Palm Desert.