Lisbon’s Ashton Hinchliffe and Leetonia’s Jaden Rivers will take to the field today for what perhaps will be the last edition of the Spaghetti Bowl for a while. (Photo by Ron Firth)

The Lisbon-Leetonia football rivalry has been played every year since 1940. It survived World War II, the teams being in different tiers in the same league and the COVID pandemic in continuous rotation.

Today’s game at Leetonia High School might be the last for the forseeable future of the football rivalry that was first played in 1915.

Deemed the Spaghetti Bowl in the modern era after the losing team served the winning team a pasta dinner a few decades ago, the series — and the two school’s scheduling relationship — is on thin ice after Leetonia’s announcement to leave the Eastern Ohio Athletic Conference for the Northeastern Athletic Conference at the start of the 2026-2027 school year.

After Leetonia said it would work to maintain its local rivalries when it announced it was leaving for the NAC on Sept. 25, things have turned sideways.

Lisbon and Leetonia were originally scheduled to meet in Week 9 in 2026 as part of the EOAC schedule. Leetonia now has an NAC league commitment that week, so other options were discussed but there was a caveat.

Leetonia athletic director Nick Sferra said the Bears were open to playing Lisbon in Week 1, 2 or 8 as long as Lisbon scheduled Leetonia in all sports at all levels with the sticking point being junior high sports.

Sferra claims the EOAC is icing the Bears out of all junior high scheduling options, so Leetonia had to draw the line in the sand since the Bears are not participating in junior high sports in the NAC due to travel concerns.

“We’re more than happy to play Lisbon but we want the middle school sports and not just one football game,” Sferra said. “When Lisbon said it wasn’t interested in scheduling the middle school sports, we said we couldn’t schedule varsity sports.”

Lisbon athletic director Kyle Bing said the EOAC has no such policy on not scheduling Leetonia in junior high sports and that his focus with the Lisbon junior high programs is on in-league contests.

“If Leetonia wants to go play junior high games it should go with the rest of the NAC schools,” Bing said.

Sferra said Leetonia has no Lisbon games in any sport scheduled for next school year as of now.

Adding to the bitterness of this situation is a hang-up on Week 1 in which the two schools were originally looking to book the Spaghetti Bowl after Leetonia announced its move to the NAC. Lisbon had signed a home-and-home contract with Newton Falls for Week 1 last season and beat the Tigers 56-7 at Newton Falls. Lisbon was recently informed that Newton Falls would not be coming to Lisbon in 2026.

The Blue Devils thought that was their shot to schedule the Bears, but as it turned out, Newton Falls called Leetonia and offered Week 1 instead to the Bears.

“They called us and my interest is finding games we can compete in so we felt it would be a very good fit for us,” Sferra said.

Sferra admitted he had not been aware of who Newton Falls dropped to get the opening but once he found out he knew there would be some hard feelings.

Bing said he thought Leetonia should have offered a one-year buffer period before they left so other EOAC athletic directors could get schedules in order for the future. Right now Lisbon has no Week 9 opponent and it will be difficult to fill.

He also didn’t like how the Newton Falls situation was handled and thought Sferra should have been aware of who the Tigers were dropping.

“It was just bad business,” Bing said. “The local ADs around here have a code and we try not to do that to each other.”

Lisbon football coach Bill Meek — who once served as a waterboy for Leetonia in the 1970s under his father coach Bill Meek Sr. — said he was deeply upset about how it all went down saying there is now a lot of “bad blood” in the relationship which he understood to once be a friendly rivalry.

“I understand why Leetonia left the league and I empathize with that because we’re a smaller school in a league with bigger schools too,” Meek said.

He said he had conversations over the winter with Leetonia football coach Matt Altomare about the Bears’ struggles with numbers but he felt assured that whatever happened about Leetonia’s league status that the game between “two Division VII schools 10 minutes apart” would continue into the future.

Meek said he feels Leetonia will come asking to play again in a few years because they have a good junior high program right now. He doesn’t feel like that is right.

“Everyone feels really bad about this,” Meek said. “I think Leetonia people deserve to know what is going on there because I don’t think they want to see this come to an end either.”

Both Bing and Meek said they do not believe Leetonia is being truthful in its messaging and it has gotten worse since May.

“It’s I believe the sixth-longest continuous rivalry in Ohio. I’ve played in this rivalry and I have coached in it,” Bing said. “I know it’s important to the communities in Lisbon and Leetonia. I don’t want it to stop but I guess it’s just not as important to some of us as it is to others.”

Lisbon leads the all-time series 58-37-5.

The Lisbon-United rivalry will take over as Columbiana County’s longest continuous rivalry if Lisbon and Leetonia do not come to an agreement to continue. The Devils and Golden Eagles have played every year since 1963.