The Long Hot Season : High School All-Star Football Games Fill the Summer Months

When the 25th annual South Bay All-Star Football Game is played tonight at El Camino College in Torrance, it may seem like the end of the season for die-hard high school football fans.

Make that the end of the suddenly long summer season.

The South Bay game is the last on an ever-expanding list of regional prep all-star football games played in the Southland during the summer.

On virtually any weekend from June through early August, a game matching top graduated high school seniors can be found to satisfy the appetite of the prep football junkie.

The South Bay event is second oldest in the Southland, surpassed only by the Orange County All-Star Football Game that has been played for 30 years. The oldest in the state is the Shrine game, which is a statewide event and has been played for 38 years.

At the other end of the spectrum are the fledgling Glendale-Burbank game, which had its first kickoff July 1, and the second annual San Bernardino County East/West game, also played July 1.

There are also the Ventura County and Kiwanis 605 games in June and the Hall of Fame, Daily News and Los Angeles Prep Senior Bowl games in July.

The Kiwanis 605 game has players from Southeast Los Angeles and Long Beach; the Hall of Fame is for the San Gabriel Valley and vicinity; Daily News for the San Fernando Valley and vicinity and Prep Senior Bowl for the Westside and Central Los Angeles.

It is difficult to find a region in Southern California that does not have a summer all-star game.

Jim Brownfield, a former Pasadena Muir High football coach who has been chairman of the Hall of Fame game since its inception in 1980, concedes that with the most recent additions the regional all-star games have reached the saturation point.

“If you put them all on a map there would be no areas left uncovered,” Brownfield said. “Anything new would be overlapping. The Glendale-Burbank game overlaps with us a little.”

But Brownfield and other organizers believe there is a need for regional games.

Brownfield said that with only a handful of players chosen for the Shrine game, regional all-star games fill a void. There were 34 players from Southern California on the South roster for this year’s game, which was played Saturday at the Rose Bowl.

“The local kids get pushed aside because the Shrine team has the smallest rosters,” he said. “The year I coached it (in 1986) we had only 24 kids, and that leaves a lot of good kids out.”

With improvements in high school football over the years, Brownfield said, most of the regional games do not lack talent.

“The game has gotten better,” Brownfield said. “There are just more good players than there were in the 1960s. There are better players and better coaches. It’s just more sophisticated, so you can have an entertaining game. Even if only 30 or 40 schools are represented, there is some quality out there.”

Of course, there are exceptions. Most notable was the first Glendale-Burbank game.

“They had some kids that were OK but they also had some kids who wouldn’t be in any other all-star game,” said Brownfield, who attended the game.”

But quality has been a strong selling point for most of the older games.

“We’ve never lacked quality,” said Gary Mazelli, publicity director and former chairman of the South Bay game. “Every year at least two players have gone on to be recognizable in the pros or college, and some years it’s more like four, five or six.”

Phil Anton, chairman of the Orange County game and president of the sponsoring Brea Lions Club, says top players in the county have passed up the Shrine game to play in their game.

“We had about four guys pass up the Shrine game last year and we’ve had that happen almost every year,” he said.

More the rule than the exception is the Hall of Fame game, which lost two of its players--defensive backs Lavars Barber of Rosemead and Daryl Green of La Puente Nogales--as late replacements for the Shrine game.

Even with occasional defections to the Shrine, the Hall of Fame has had a good record in providing players a last-gasp opportunity to earn a college football scholarship.

“We’ve had about 10 players pick up scholarships who didn’t have them before they played in the game,” Brownfield said. “It’s been about one a year.”

Anton and Mazelli said players in their games also have received college scholarships as a result of their performances.

“We’ve had guys who have been alternates for scholarships and this game has springboarded them to picking it up,” Mazelli said.

Most players, though, are not playing in regional all-star games with the hope of landing a college scholarship.

“For most kids, they like these games because they want to play against good competition at every position,” Brownfield said. “An all-star game of this kind is very challenging for them.”

Jack Himebaugh, recruiting coordinator at USC, is in a position to concur with Brownfield. Himebaugh’s son, Curt, was a senior at South Hills High in Covina and played in the Hall of Fame game as a wide receiver. “He got a chance to play with a more select group of people and that was a good thing for him,” Himebaugh said.

“It’s a fun thing and that’s the way to look at it. It’s another chance for the players to play.”

For linebacker Mumbie Mushonga of Muir, who played in the Hall of Fame game, simply being selected for an all-star game was satisfying.

Mushonga said the only concern he had was the possibility of injury. As it turned out, Mushonga had reason for concern because he suffered a slight knee injury in practice.

“Knowing that people feel you’re one of the best in your area, it’s an honor,” said Mushonga, who will play for the University of New Mexico in the fall. “You like to represent your school and play well in a game like that.”

Organizers say the all-star games go a long way toward reaching their fund-raising needs. Most are staged by local service organizations such as the Lions and Kiwanis clubs.

“I keep in touch with a lot of the others and they all say their money goes to help with projects,” Brownfield said. “You’re never going to build a hospital from a game like this, but that’s not what they want to do. They’re looking mostly for money for community projects and fund-raisers.”

Perhaps the most successful of the regional games has been the Orange County contest, which is staged by the Brea Lions Club through its Orange County Youth Foundation.

Anton said that in recent years the game has averaged about 8,000 fans and nets about $30,000, most of which goes to youth-oriented charities in Orange County.

“We keep 15% for starting up every year and get a percentage after that,” Anton said. “We net about $30,000 a year by the time we pay for insurance, uniforms, taping and everything else.”

The game has also been televised the last five years by an Orange County cable company.

Anton said the establishment of rivalries has played an important role in the game’s success.

“It’s a north-south game and there’s a lot of county rivalry,” he said. “We get the top players, almost all household names in the county.”

He said rosters are selected by Orange County sportswriters. “We try to keep it a writers’ game, involve the coaches and make it a countywide game,” Anton said.

The South Bay game, which is sponsored for charity by the West Torrance Lions Club and the Daily Breeze newspaper, has also been a financial success.

Mazelli said that his game has had a few financial problems over the years but said that is not unusual.

“We’ve experienced some difficulties just as the Shrine game has, but we decided to stay with it because there is a nucleus of people that will support this each year,” he said.

He said the game has always drawn good crowds, partly because it usually features a lot of players from L.A. City powers Banning and Carson. “Our attendence has fluctuated from 6,000 to 8,000,” Mazelli said. “We’d like to have 14,000, but we can’t expect that kind of support.”

Still, the game has been a financial success. “Every year we’ve managed to come up with some money and that’s primarily due to the fact that we have a lot of major contributors (such as Mobil Oil and the Los Angeles Raiders) that come up with a lot of money to put this game on,” he said.

The game has been televised by a South Bay cable company for the last four years.

The Hall of Fame game, which helps raise money for the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame’s scholarship fund, has yet to match the attendence figures of the Orange County and South Bay games.

With about 5,500 at the 10th annual game in July at Citrus College in Glendora, Brownfield said he has seen considerable improvement from the beginning.

“When it started we were getting 1,500 people or so and end up with one scholarship from it,” he said.

He said the game, which has a low-budget approach, has usually averaged a paid attendence of 2,500 to 3,000 and generated a profit.

“We’ve always made about $5,000 on the game,” Brownfield said. “The game has always made money. We haven’t ever even broke even. So the game has paid for itself.

“Most of these games operate under the idea that they need to draw 3,000 to 5,000 (to break even). If they get that they’ll be OK.”

In recent years, organizers agree that the success of their games has been a factor in the declining attendence of the Shrine game. The Shrine, which regularly attracted crowds of 50,000 or more in the 1950s and ‘60s, has slumped in recent years, including a crowd of about 15,000 last week.

“I think what’s happened to the Shrine Game is people have said we’d rather watch our local game and see all of our kids than go to the Shrine game and see only one or two,” Brownfield says.

Organizers of regional games say they have no intention of competing with the Shrine. They say public appeal for their games stems from the fact that they are local in scope and carry limited expectations.

Said Mazelli: “This is not meant to be a Shrine game. The scale of this game has always been exactly what we wanted. We never wanted to be a Shrine game. This is the way we wanted it.”

Organizers agree that as long as they follow that approach, the summer will continue to seem like a second season for high school football.