High School Football National Championship

The High School Football National Championship is a national championship honor awarded to the best high school football team(s) in the United States of America based on rankings from such sources as USA Today^[1] and the National Prep Poll. There have also been some efforts over the years at organizing a single-game playoff for the national championship.

Background[]

The oldest of the rating systems, the National Sports News Service, was begun by Art Johlfs—who originally started naming champions in 1927 as a 21 year old high school coach and official,^[2] but did so much more formally starting in 1959^[3] after enlarging his network of supporting hobbyists.^[2] Johlfs himself managed these rankings through the 1978 season. He turned the poll over to Barrett Conley "Barry" Sollenberger, starting in 1979 (Sollenberger had previously maintained a poll for Joe Namath's National Prep Sports magazine in 1976, before it was discontinued the following year). The NSNS poll then remained under Sollenberger's management through 1999 (along the way he also retroactively picked back as far as 1910,^[2] although at least one source has the NSNS making a 1904 pick as well^[4]: xv). It was then merged into Doug Huff's year-old, competing Fox FAB 50 poll starting in 2000,^[2] which in turn continued on through 2014.^[5] An early compilation listing of NSNS champions^[6] does not necessarily match a more recent listing.^{[7]: 44–45} It is not immediately clear if these discrepancies are due to poor record-keeping, or if Sollenberger or Huff adjusted the list of champions over the years as new information came to light—or if they simply just disagreed with Johlfs' picks. Johlfs, for his part, described how he arrived at choosing a champion: he accepted input from Minnesota college and professional coaches, reviewed game statistics, films,^[8] and press clippings,^[9] and considered the school's total enrollment.^[10] Johlfs said that his picks initially tended to be midwestern schools but shifted southward, because southern schools tended to play more games and were also allowed to compete in playoffs.^[3] He was also known to keep a champion as the top-ranked team indefinitely in subsequent seasons' rankings as long as another team had not beaten them yet;^[3] this ended up allowing multiple teams to repeat as champions, drawing some criticism to Johlfs.^[9] Sollenberger, on the other hand, primarily determined champions by attending prominent games in person, while also consulting college football coaching staffs. He further acknowledged factoring in teams' past histories and their success in the larger population centers of the day when considering teams for his poll—usually including three teams from California and two teams each from Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas in his rankings.^[11] Notably, Florida had a relatively sizable number of repeat champions in Johlfs' rating system but saw a significant drop in its number of champions under Sollenberger.

Informal intersectional games deemed as "national championship games" by the two participating schools were also, on occasion, sometimes played. Sometimes a dominant team in one state would defeat a dominant team in a neighboring state after the regular season and then would self-claim the national championship. However, sometimes such a game could not be scheduled, like in 1936 after Washington of Massillon, Ohio, refused to withhold its black players in a proposed game with segregated Central of Knoxville, Tennessee. Central subsequently proclaimed itself national champion that year.^[12] On December 31, 1938, duPont Manual of Louisville, Kentucky, and New Britain of Connecticut played in an actual national championship game at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a formal, third-party sponsor, the Louisiana Sports Association–and, by extension, the Sugar Bowl Committee, which held a series of sporting events leading up to the Sugar Bowl game itself. Manual won, 28–20.^[13] The following year, on December 30, the game featured Pine Bluff of Arkansas, which defeated Baton Rouge by a score of 26–0.^[13] This series of games proved difficult to organize, due to some states' prohibition of postseason play; Pine Bluff, for example, had to receive a special waiver from its state's high school sports association to participate in the game.^[14] Even some schools that were eligible for postseason games like Massillon were unable to play in the contest, since their association only allowed postseason games through the month of November.^[15] Also in 1939, the National Sports Council, chaired by columnist Grantland Rice, staged a national championship game Christmas night in the Miami Orange Bowl, won by Garfield of New Jersey, 16-13, over Miami of Florida; unlike the LSA Game, it featured two undefeated and untied teams from different sections of the country.^[16] After World War II the National Federation of State High School Associations also began discouraging intersectional postseason games.^[11]

Team and coaching superlatives[]

Concord, California De La Salle won 12 total national championships from 1994 to 2015, including 6 in a row from 1998 to 2003.

The first 10 of De La Salle's titles were coached by Bob Ladouceur, including all of those acquired during the 6-year streak. Roger Harriott (Davie, Florida University in 2012 and Fort Lauderdale, Florida St. Thomas Aquinas in 2019) and Todd Dodge (Southlake, Texas Carroll from 2004 to 2006 and Austin, Texas Westlake in 2020) are the only head coaches to lead 2 different schools to national championships. Tony Sanchez (Las Vegas, Nevada Bishop Gorman in 2014) and Kenny Sanchez (Bishop Gorman in 2015 and 2016) are the only brothers^[17] to lead a school to a national championship.

Selectors[]

Notes: *—it is not immediately clear if these games were only scheduled between the two competing teams and base their authority on general acclamation, or if any or all of these games had an independent third party formally sponsor it to increase legitimacy; **—National Sports News Service rankings were merged into the Fox FAB 50 rankings, beginning in 2000; †—USA High School Football rankings were split into public and private school divisions, beginning in 2013; ‡—American Football Monthly rankings were split into public and private school divisions, beginning in 2005

National champions by year[]

Note: all information between 1904 and 2000 is derived from the National High School Football Record Book (2001),^[7] unless otherwise specified; *—listings from an earlier source^[6] do not necessarily match listings from a more recent source^[7]—it is not immediately clear if this was due to poor record-keeping or if past champions were later reevaluated by the National Sports News Service and revised accordingly

National championships by school[]

See also[]

• USA Today All-USA high school football team (including Super 25 teams in U.S. and Top 10 teams in East, South, Midwest, and West regions)
• National Sports News Service - 1978 Ranking - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NSNS_1978_HS_Football_Ranking.jpg

References[]

National Sports New Service HS Football Rankings 1978

1978 National Sports News Service High School Football Ranking