MitchMash: Tiny Boron High School football team could be headed to the Super Bowl

Updated, 11-21-14

The town name sounds like it's from outer space. Considering where it is, it might as well be. Considering the community's true sense of pride and tradition, it's a place a little out of this world.

Boron (Calif.), population 2,253, sits smack dab in the middle of the Mojave Desert, halfway between Bakersfield and Barstow along Highway 58.

"We are in the middle of the desert," Boron athletic director Rob Kostopoulos told NFL Films. "You have extreme heat. You get the cold in the winter. When the wind blows, there's a lot of dirt in the air.

"We are a very small community who are very, very proud people."

It's a place Timothy Seaman, 32, remembered vividly growing up and a place he sought to come.

"It takes a while to get here coming from any direction," said the head football coach for Boron High, enrollment 160. "But it's worth the drive. It's a great little town. It's a great community.

"We have no stops or stop lights. We don't have McDonald's or Wal-Mart. But we have football. And we love it."

The town, and Seaman's small but mighty football program, may soon be a household name if it wins an NFL "Together We Make Football" contest that could send the entire 23-player Boron roster to the Super Bowl, Feb. 1 at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz.

Seaman, a second-year coach for the Bobcats, heard about the contest while channel surfing and immediately made his pitch. The organizers liked Boron's story so much that it's been picked as one of three finalists in the Group/Team division.

Voting for the contest takes place starting Friday through Jan. 4. Viewers can vote once per day. The voting is the only criteria to pick a winner. Go here to vote

"People need to get out and vote," Seaman said. 

The coach and senior team captains Keith Core and Cody Parker took a red-eye flight from LAX Wednesday and will appear on NBC's "Today" show on Friday to tell their tale, which will largely be told via a video piece that was produced by NFL Films. 

See video here.

A crew came out from New Jersey to the desolate town — roughly a 3,500-mile trip — last month and shot footage of the team and the town for three days. NFL Hall of Famer Marcus Allen made a surprise appearance at a pep rally and with it, handed over a silver football that signified Boron was a finalist.

"One of the best days of my life," Seaman said. "It was great for everyone. And to meet Marcus Allen, a real thrill."

Their story revealed how Boron is the smallest school that supports an 11-man football team in California (according to the coach) and 43 of the 70 boys in the school are in the program. How most of the players goes both ways. How most of the kids' families work at the borax mine, which is the largest in the world, according to Seaman.

"To play football at Boron, you have to be an ironman," Core said.

Because of its desolate location — certainly by California standards — the players haven't experienced traffic of any nature. 

"It takes an hour in any direction to get to a grocery store," Seaman said. "I don't know if any of the kids have ever been on an airplane and definitely not a taxi."

Core and Parker have been by now. They arrived Thursday morning and their hotel is right in the heart of Times Square. On their agenda Thursday was a trip to Central Park and the 9-11 Monument.

Neither player had taken a taxi/car service trip either. The coach and two players were picked up by a car service Wednesday night to take the three-hour drive to LAX.

"It's exciting for me as well," Seaman said on Tuesday. "I've never been to New York."

Seaman grew up and played at Strathmore (Calif.), in the Central Valley region of California. Also a hot and largely rural area, it was Times Square compared to Boron, which has produced remarkably good football teams despite its smallish size.

The Bobcats, in fact, had won four CIF Southern Section titles and eight league crowns before Seaman arrived, Boron had won at least 10 games in six of the previous eight seasons.

"When I was a senior in high school, our team went to a TV selection show and I remember seeing kids from Boron," Seaman said. "I remember them being huge and thinking they were some big-time program.

"Little did I know it was a really big program with very small numbers," Seaman said.

He found out just how entrenched the community is when it comes to the football program.

"You have families who have lived here, gone to school and played football here three and four generations," Seaman said. "These guys want to win football games because their brothers did before them, their dads did it before them. When you say Bobcat pride, that means you do it for the guys who did it before you."

Along with the tradition also comes rusty weight equipment and outdated facilities. Seaman is out to change all that.

"While maintaining the tradition of the program, of course," he said.

No matter if the facilities get a facelift or not, Friday nights are sacred in Boron.

"This is there one chance to show what Boron is about," Kostopoulos said. "It's bigger than football."