Everyone has his memories. Certainly, the New England Patriots are no different. While high school football doesn’t dominate most of the other 49 states on Thanksgiving in the way it does in Massachusetts, those in the New England locker room — who have Thanksgiving off, thanks to head coach Bill Belichick — have experienced some form of T-Day football over the course of their lives, whether it’s in the backyard, on the plasma screen or the college gridiron.
While he was at Purdue, linebacker Rob Ninkovich made it a tradition to head home to Illinois, and every year, he’d play all-out tackle football with his old high school teammates. Unfortunately for them, they left organized football behind, and Ninkovich was a Big Ten standout.
“I had my way with them,” Ninkovich said. “It was pretty fun. [If] you don’t play football for a few years, you’re not fast. You’re not strong. They’d all want me on their team. Everyone was trying to pick me first, so that was fun.”
Ninkovich was the modern-day William “Refrigerator” Perry, while his friends laid in his wake like cow pies.
“Yeah, they’d just let me go,” Ninkovich said with a laugh, “wouldn’t even try.”
Center Dan Koppen was a victim of poor timing and lost his chance to play high school football on Thanksgiving. Whitehall High abandoned its Thanksgiving game during Koppen’s sophomore season — his first year on the varsity squad — because it restricted its chances of playing in the Pennsylvania state playoffs.
“Growing up, personally, we always had a Turkey Day game that we went to that my brother played in,” Koppen said. “That was what you did. You went to the high school football game then came home and ate your dinner. That was part of me growing up, and unfortunately I didn’t get to participate in it."
Koppen is one of the very few Patriots who can closely relate to the Massachusetts tradition.
“You can see what the big hype is and how important it is,” he said.
Cornerback Terrence Wheatley left Plano, Texas, to attend the University of Colorado, which has a steep Thanksgiving week tradition. Every year, the Buffaloes play Nebraska the Friday after Thanksgiving, which serves as one of the better rivalries in college football.
“It was Nebraska week,” Wheatley said. “It was pretty much the most important game of the year normally, so I always had family come out for the game. We would always go out to eat the night before, and then it was a regular game after that.”
Wheatley said the memory that sticks out the most from that series occurred during his sophomore year, when the referees stopped the game for about a half hour in the third quarter and kicked out CU’s entire student section for throwing things onto the field.
Practice squad tight end Rob Myers never got the chance to play a game on Thanksgiving but has taken part in a holiday tradition that everyone can relate with.
“My freshman year [of college at Utah State], I got to go back home, but since then, I had to spend it at buddies’ houses,” said Myers, who is from Houston. “One of the best [Thanksgiving memories] is when my family came up my senior year, and they actually came up to Utah, my whole family. We had Thanksgiving up there together, which was the first time we ever did that. That was pretty cool.”
