The Meat Grinder

Welcome back to another episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of high school football in Connecticut. What a finish to the CIAC playoffs! There were wire-to-wire finishes, late-game heroics and historic feats by dominant teams. We’ll break down all the results, hear from players and coaches, and take a look at the final GametimeCT Top 10 poll of the season. Rundown: 0:00 - Football season...

Welcome back to another episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of high school football in Connecticut. It's time for the CIAC championships! The schedule is set for Saturday, and all that's left is for the teams to battle it out and see who will be crowned a state champion. But first, we'll recap how we got to these final pairings after a wild day of semifinals that featured blowouts, upset...

Welcome back to another episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of high school football in Connecticut. Wow, what a quarterfinal round in the CIAC playoffs! We saw upsets, blowouts, game-winning touchdowns and game-saving defensive plays. We’ll recap all of it, and we’ll also look ahead to a jam-packed semifinal round, where we break down every matchup and give our predictions. Learn more ab...

Welcome back to another episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of high school football in Connecticut. It's time for the CIAC playoffs! With the regular season in the rearview, it's time to take a look at each playoff bracket for each class, as we'll breakdown the matchups and give our predictions for the quarterfinals. We'll also recap some of the wild Thanksgiving week games that helped d...

Welcome back to another episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of high school football in Connecticut. It's our Thanksgiving football week preview episode! We'll breakdown all the important games on the slate that have playoff implications and hometown bragging rights. We'll also do more playoff point calculations.  They break down those games, the latest GametimeCT Top 10 Poll and some of...

Welcome back to another episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of high school football in Connecticut. Fall state championships are over, and all the focus has turned to football as the season nears the home stretch. With Thanksgiving football only a couple weeks away, the class playoff pictures are starting to take shape, and in this episode we’ll begin breaking down where each team stands...

Welcome back to another thrilling episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of high school football in Connecticut. It was a wild Week 9 in CIAC football, with huge upsets across the board on Friday night, as teams like Greenwich, Windsor, and Fairfield Prep all went down. St. Joseph head coach Joe Della Vecchia also reached a huge milestone on Saturday. They break down those games, the ensuin...

Welcome back to another thrilling episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of high school football in Connecticut.  One ranked matchup highlighted Week 8’s slate of games, and it ended with No. 8 St. Joseph on top over No. 10 Staples. No. 3 Greenwich took care of business as well over Fairfield Ludlowe, as did No. 2 Killingly. No. 4 Fairfield Prep also needed a game-winning field goal to beat...

Welcome back to another thrilling episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of high school football in Connecticut.  On this week's episode, SPB and Pete will recap the No. 1 New Canaan vs. No. 2 Greenwich matchup on Friday as well as another ranked battle on Saturday. Plus other action across the state. We'll also take a look at the GametimeCT Top 10 Poll and see where things stand in the pla...

Welcome back to another thrilling episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of high school football in Connecticut.  It's the midway point in the CIAC football season, so on this week's episode, hosts Sean Patrick Bowley and Pete Paguaga will take a look at how things stands in each Class as well as do a "fantasy football draft" of some of the top players in the state so far.  They'll also bri...

Welcome back to another thrilling episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of high school football in Connecticut.  On this week's episode, SPB and Pete discuss two huge, but very different upsets to Top 10 teams: Wilton's rout of No. 5 Staples and Cheshire's 28-27 takedown of No. 4 Hand on a two-point conversion in overtime. They were two of a handful of surprising results during the first m...

WELCOME BACK to another thrilling edition of THE MEAT GRINDER, your weekly dose of High School Football in Connecticut.  On this week's episode, we’ll recap several top-ranked matchups from Saturday and a game that set the record for the most points scored in a single game in Connecticut history. We'll also break down the latest Top 10 poll—and of course, give our SHOUTOUTS. Learn more about your...

WELCOME BACK to another thrilling edition of THE MEAT GRINDER, your weekly dose of High School Football in Connecticut.  Join Sean Patrick Bowley and Pete Paguaga LIVE at 7:30 p.m. as they discuss a wild Week 3, including Waterbury's Career Academy's historic win over Ansonia, Staples' win over West Haven on a game-winning field goal, the most recent Top 10 poll, and much more.  Rundown 0:00 - Int...

WELCOME BACK to another thrilling edition of THE MEAT GRINDER, your weekly dose of High School Football in Connecticut.  Join Sean Patrick Bowley and Pete Paguaga as they discuss what happened in Week 2 of the 2025 Connecticut high school football season.  This week, the guys discuss two of the biggest results in Week 2, and they both happened under the Thursday night lights: Connor Shea and Seymo...

This week on the Meat Grinder, hosts Pete Paguaga and Sean Patrick Bowley break down an enlightening Week 1 of Connecticut High School Football Alliance games, including the big one at Dalling Field in Trumbull where Bobby Reh, the son of a St. Joseph state champ, rallied Hand to a thrilling, buzzer-beating victory over the No. 4-ranked Hogs — serving their barbeque chicken dish cold. Elsewhere, P...

It's the SEASON 8 Premiere of THE MEAT GRINDER, Connecticut High School Football podcast from GameTimeCT.In the FIRST episode of the 2025 season, PETE'S BACK! Join Pete Paguaga and Sean Patrick Bowley as they look back on the offseason changes, say good bye to those lost, hello to 22 new coaches, unveil the preseason GametimeCT Top 10 Poll and, at last, break down all six playoff divisions and pic...

It's all over. We've crowned six state champions and concluded the 2024 CIAC high school football season. There were a few surprises -- Masuk knocking off No. 1-ranked Windsor to win the Class MM final and its first title since 2004 comes to mind. But for the most part, it was a weekend of Blue Bloods with Ansonia (22nd title), New Canaan (15th), Greenwich (10th), St. Joseph (16th) and maybe even...

WELCOME BACK to another edition of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of High School Football in Connecticut. And, at least, it's Championship Weekend! And that means it's the last week of high school football in Connecticut. Forty-eight teams entered, 12 teams remain to play for six (lol) CIAC championships. If the weekend's finals are even remotely as good as Sunday's semifinals, we're in for a...

Welcome back to another thrilling episode of THE MEAT GRINDER, your weekly does of High School Football in Connecticut. Twenty-four teams are gone, 24 remain. We've reached Semifinal Sunday in the race for the six 2024 state championships! After a rainy Thanksgiving we were treated to snow, glorious and beautiful snow on Tuesday's CIAC quarterfinals (unless you were along the Connecticut shoreline...

WELCOME BACK to another thrilling episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of High School Football in Connecticut. After a wild (and wet) week of great Thanksgiving games, we've finally reached the 2024 CIAC Football Postseason!  On Tuesday night, Valley Regional/Old Lyme rallied to knock off H-K and, ultimately, punch its Class S playoff tickets. On Wednesday night, Naugatuck out-slugged Ans...

Welcome back to another thrilling episode of The Meat Grinder, your weekly dose of High School Football in Connecticut. And, because we live in the great state of Connecticut and because we're fast approaching the last Thursday in November AND because we love high school football, you should know what this episode is all about. Yes, turkeys, it's Thanksgiving Football Week in Connecticut, the fina...

GameTimeCT's Pete Paguaga and Sean Patrick Bowley are back for Week 11 of the staff pick'ems for the 2024 football season. Each and every week the duo will be selecting 10 games from across the state. THE RUNDOWN 0:00 - 2::21 — Intro 2:22 - 4:00 — Hall (2-7) at Conard (3-6) 4:01- 5:16 — NW United (8-0) at Cheney Tech (6-3) 5:17- 6:31— MSW (1-8) at SMSA (1-8) 6:32- 7:45 — Wilbur Cross (1-7) at Hard...

West Haven coach Rich Boshea joined Sean Patrick Bowley and Pete Paguaga in the Coach's Corner for the tenth episode of the Meat Grinder spin off podcast, the Coach's Corner, to talk about his team's 8-1 start to the season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Week 11 — the last weekend of the 2024 high school football season before our favorite time of the year, the grand Thanksgiving week finale. And you know what that means! It's time, at last, to take a detailed dive into the CIAC football playoff picture heading into Thanksgiving Week. Half of the 2024 field is set: Twenty-four teams have (unofficially) qualified for 48 spots across the six pl...

GameTimeCT's Pete Paguaga and Sean Patrick Bowley are back for Week 10 of the staff pick'ems for the 2024 football season. Each and every week the duo will be selecting 10 games from across the state. THE RUNDOWN  0:00 - 3:23 — Intro 3:24 - 5:49 — East Hartford (2-6) at Hall (2-6) 5:50 - 7:10 — Cheney Tech (6-2) at Bullard Havens (5-3) 7:11 - 9:35 — Fitch (4-4) at Stonington (6-2) 9:36 - 11:25 — R...