You've heard of the Annual World Mud Football Championships, right? The Mud Bowl? In North Conway, NH? For charity? And the Annual Tournament of Mud Parade, right? Where all the competing teams have outrageously funny floats, all designed around the current year's theme?You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?
Well...let me inform and enlighten you...
It's been called the cleanest sport played in knee deep mud. The tournament features nine teams from throughout New England in three days of two-hand touch mud football fun with all funds benefiting local charities. In the event's 34-year history in North Conway, the Mud Bowl has raised hundreds of thousands for local charities.
Each year's World Mud Bowl celebrates a theme (this year's was “Super Muddy Heroes”) and features spirit award competitions, cheerleading teams, the annual Tournament of Mud Parade on Saturday on North Conway's Main Street, half-time skits, belly dancers, choreographed mud swimming routines, and three days of exciting two-hand touch mud football action.
You have to see it to believe it. And you may be able to just that. This year a film crew from NFL Films was in town catching every angle of the Mud Bowl games and events you could imagine. The footage is expected to air on ESPN, ESPN2 or the NFL channel.
Three Decades of Mud Bowl History:
Legend has it that the Carrabassett Valley Rats started the annual Mud Bowl in Kingfield, Maine, after a few University of Maine fraternity brothers moved there 38 years ago. According to the story, alumni of a fraternity had challenged their college student brothers to a touch football game in a muddy field back on the Orono campus in the early 1970s. When a few of the alumni moved to the ski resort of Sugarloaf/USA in northwestern Maine in 1972, they brought their unusual sport with them. Local Carrabassett Valley residents in need of some fall fun took a liking to the games. But when interest waned a few years later, it was up to newspaper publisher Dale Rolfe to rescue the sport, and that he did by founding a mud football league. That was in 1975.
In 1975, Steve Eastman, a former Carrabassett Valley resident and newspaper editor who had moved to North Conway, was asked to put together a team — something which he did with friend Richard DeAngelis of the old Alpine Funspot of the North Country, located near the base of Cranmore. They christened the team the Mt. Washington Valley Hogs. The Hogs traveled to Kingfield and won that 1975 World Mud Bowl, 6-0, over the Rats, and in keeping with then tradition, got to host Mud Bowl the following year. The event’s longtime sponsor is Amoskeag Beverages, distributors of Lite Beer from Miller. Big surprise there, but the company has helped to make Mud Bowl the success it is today, and their longstanding support cannot be overstated.
Under the rules of mud football back in those days, the winning team got to host the next Mud Bowl in 1976. As a result of the Hog's win, the first Mud Bowl came to North Conway that year as well as the next three years, because the Hogs kept right on winning Mud Bowls. Games were played in a variety of cornfields back then. Things were a lot more low-key then than they are now. Hats were passed around at halftime, for example, to raise money for the Hogs’ official charity, the North Conway Community Center. (The take was a few hundred dollars — a far cry from the $28,000 average that Mud Bowl has annually taken in these past few years). When the Hogs lost a game in overtime played at the base of Mt. Cranmore in 1979 to the upstart New York State Hamslammers, 6-0, that sent the 1980 Mud Bowl to the Hamslammers’ field in Holland Patent, N.Y.
The Hogs and other teams traveled the eight hours from North Conway to the games, with the Hogs bringing home the bacon by winning back the Mud Bowl Cup when they beat the Hamslammers in an exciting battle, 8-7.
With the 1980 Mud Bowl played in upstate New York, Mt. Washington Valley organizers came up with the idea of putting on the 1980 Mud Olympics back in North Conway the week after the Mud Bowl as a way to keep the charitable aspect of mud football going for local charities. It wouldn’t be an official Mud Bowl — but it would be fun!
A big step in the evolution of mud football occurred at those 1980 Mud Olympics when NBC-TV’s “Real People” program covered the event. Suddenly, Mud Bowl was national — even international, when the Associated Press ran a few photos which were carried around the globe. Played at the base of Mt. Cranmore, it was at those Mud Olympics that the Mass Muddas (now Muddas Football Club, the 15-time world champs) made their first appearance in a mud football game in North Conway. They pummeled the Hogs on national television.
Another big step occurred in 1981, when a group of teams formed the National Mud Football Association to further oversee the sport’s growth. Also that year, the Hogs and volunteers teamed up with the North Conway Community Center to transform a former swamp into Hog Coliseum. The facility was so nice, that Mud Bowl officials voted in 1983 to hold all future Mud Bowls in North Conway, regardless of which team won. The first “Tournament of Mud Parade” was also held in 1981, adding more color to the games’ overall entertainment appeal, founded by Steve Eastman to be a takeoff on the Rose Bowl's Tournament of Roses parade.
Teams that have participated over the years include:
- The Nashua Mud Gumbys of Nashua, NH
- The North Shore Mudsharks of Peabody & Lynn, Mass.
- The Muddas Football Club of Amherst, NH
- The Mt. Washington Valley Hogs of North Conway, NH
- The Merrimack Mudcats of Franklin, NH
- The Carrabassett Valley Rats of Kingfield, Maine
- The Peabody Predators of Beverly, Mass.
- The Cumberland Muckaneers of Cumberland, RI and the newest team...
- The North Country Mud Crocs of North Conway, NH
The Annual World Mud Football Championships are always held the first weekend after Labor Day. The period after Labor Day used to be a slow one Mt. Washington Valley in terms of tourism, but no more — Mud Bowl has helped to make the local economy grow while aiding charitable causes, with more than $500,000 raised over the years.
