Pennsylvania Football History

Every NFL Draft – which began in 1936 – has featured at least three players who competed in high school in Pennsylvania. This year’s edition will kickoff Thursday in Pittsburgh. Take a look at the following tidbits and links to explore our state’s history over the previous 90 NFL Drafts.

2025 NFL Draft Recap

Last year’s Draft saw just five players from PA high schools selected, tying 2012, 2019 and 2022 for the fewest picks in a year since the all-time low of three selections in 2007. Here is a breakdown of each 2025 draftee who played in Pennsylvania:

Abdul Carter (LaSalle) – 1st Round, 3rd overall pick to the Giants

• Highest-selected PA high school grad since Saquon Barkley was chosen 2nd overall in 2018, also by the Giants.
• First LaSalle grad to be selected since Jimmy Morrissey (7th round, 230th overall by the Raiders) in 2021.
• Third LaSalle linebacker to be selected all-time, joining Zaire Franklin (2018) and Charlie Zapiec (1972).
• Is the 97th first-round pick among Pennsylvania high school graduates.

Kyle McCord (St. Joseph’s Prep) – 6th Round, 181st overall pick to the Eagles

• The 118th PA player to be selected by the Eagles
• St. Joe’s Prep’s 12th NFL Draft pick all-time and second QB, joining Rich Gannon (1987).
• The third player from St. Joe’s to be picked by the Eagles, but the first since Forrest Hall in 1945 (Fran Murray in 1937 was the first).
• The 23rd PA player to be selected out of Syracuse and the first since Franklin.

Will Howard (Downingtown West) – 6th Round, 185th overall pick to the Steelers

• The first player ever selected from Downingtown West. Paul Siever was chosen in the 1992 Draft but played at Downingtown HS before it split into East and West a decade later. Downingtown East has had two selections – Tyler Kroft in 2015 and Kyle Lauletta in 2018.
• The 80th PA high school quarterback ever selected (McCord was 79th).
• The 29th Ohio State player from a PA high school to be picked, tying the Buckeyes with Miami (FL) for the ninth-most among college programs.

Gavin Bartholomew (Blue Mountain) – 6th Round, 202nd overall pick to the Vikings

• The first player ever selected from Blue Mountain. Bartholomew is the first player chosen from a Schuylkill County school since Marian Catholic’s Sean Love was chosen by the Cowboys in 1991.
• The first District 11 player chosen since Nazareth’s Jahan Dotson in 2022.
• The 49th tight end and the 178th Pitt Panther from PA chosen.

Donte Kent (Harrisburg) – 7th Round, 229th overall pick to the Steelers

• The first player from Harrisburg selected since Micah Parsons in 2021 and the 7th Cougar selected all-time.
• The first PA player to ever be selected out of Central Michigan.
• Joins Joey Porter, Jr. (2023), Daequan Hardy & MJ Devonshire (2024) to give PA a cornerback selected in three consecutive Drafts.

PA High Schools with 10+ NFL Draft Selections

In all, 503 different high schools in Pennsylvania have had at least one player selected in an NFL Draft. Here are the 18 with at least ten draftees:

Most Drafted Players by PIAA District

Some schools on this list – like Johnstown and Farrell – have switched PIAA districts over time. This list shows schools with their current district.

Links

All-Time list of NFL Draft picks

All draft picks, sorted by school (includes NFL, AFL & AAFC draft picks)

Players by college, by postion, by year & by NFL team

First Round NFL Draft picks from PA high schools

The State Championship Game Record Book has been updated with all of the 2024 title game statistics. Click the link below to follow along this weekend to see if any new records are set!

(I am still missing the penalty statistics for last year’s AA game between Troy and Central Clarion. If you have this data available, please let me know.)

*Feel free to use any and all information found here, but please credit PFH and Shayne Schafer if you use anything from this project. Thanks!

State Championship Game Record Book, pre-2025 State Finals

The state wins list has – finally – been updated and is complete through the 2024 season. Links can be found just below, but first I want to give the standard disclaimer for this list:

These numbers are based primarily upon the work of Dr. Roger Saylor, whose work can be found online via Penn State. Dr. Saylor completed these records through about 2009 (2010 for some schools), and then I have added to them in the years since.

My numbers likely differ from the numbers of other sources, including schools or local media outlets, for a few reasons. First, Saylor had a tendency to not count games played against non-academic institutions (YMCAs, alumni teams, etc.), but wasn’t always consistent with this. He was also doing this research largely in the days before the internet and compiled hundreds of thousands of game results by hand from newspaper reports. I still can’t wrap my mind around this Herculean task, but that also means that there are likely some missing games in some teams’ files. I do think that the Saylor Sheets are accurate to a high degree, especially considering the methods Saylor had to use to create them. If you feel that your school’s all-time record as shown here is incorrect, let me know and provide any resources you can to help me correct it.

There is also the issue of who to issue wins to when a school ends up merging or participates in a co-op. I’ve admittedly been a little inconsistent with this over the years, but I’m trying to sort through these in the most accurate way possible. I’ve come around to the idea that a school should be treated as a new entity any time its student population changes. This will take me some time to untangle in these numbers and will cause some pretty big changes in the Wins List over time (including for some high-ranking programs). If you feel that I’ve bungled one of these situations, please reach out.

The Lists

The links to various arrangements of the Wins List are included below:

Teams Ranked by All-Time Wins

Teams Ranked by All-Time Games Played

Teams Ranked by Winning Percentage

A few notes:

• Mount Carmel became the first Pennsylvania school to win 900 games last fall and now sits at 907, putting its lead over Easton at 18 wins.
• The list of schools with at least 700 wins is now at 23. Sixty-seven schools have won at least 600 games and there are now 158 schools with 500+ wins.
• The three winningest teams in each district, along with the leaders for independent schools and schools that no longer field football programs:

• 154 schools have played at least 1,000 games. Pennridge and South Williamsport will both reach that milestone on opening night this season; Somerset will join the club the following week.
• Blakely remains the program with the highest winning percentage all-time (.817) and will likely hold that crown for a very long time. The school went 252-51-14 from 1936 to 1968. Second-place Central Valley (.786) has played 125 fewer games than Blakely to this point. The Warriors would have to go 108-17 over that stretch to take the number one spot. Central Clarion also has a .786 winning percentage, but has played only 56 games so far.
• How many active programs are exactly .500 all-time? Two: Saucon Valley (372-372-10) and Upper Merion (458-458-34). Quakertown’s record rounds to .500, but it is actually 539-540-46 since 1908. Several other defunct programs were also exactly .500, but aside from Coraopolis (which went 247-247-37 from 1905 to 1970), none of them played more than a handful of games.
• The most unbreakable record in Pennsylvania high school football that nobody ever talks about? Chester’s 89 ties. Ties aren’t exactly impossible anymore, but they require unusual circumstances to occur (weather delays in games that can’t be completed later, etc.). Second place on the all-time ties list is Scranton Central, which hasn’t fielded a football team in 35 years and has 70 ties. The closest active program to Chester is New Castle with 69. It’s safe to say that no school is making up a 20+ tie gap, so the record is Chester’s forever.
• Finally, for the not-so-fun list. Here are the ten programs to lose 600+ games in their histories:

704 – Lebanon

659 – Reading

629 – Union City

627 – Pottstown

624 – Roman Catholic

613 – Norwin

610 – South Philadelphia

609 – Scranton

606 – Radnor

602 – Allentown Allen

I’m going to warn you right now: this post was born from a combination of boredom and a fairly stupid idea.

We’re in late March, essentially the dark side of the Moon when it comes to the high school football calendar. The 2024 season is falling further and further behind us with each passing day, yet the 2025 season doesn’t feel particularly close yet. One of two things will happen regarding high school football discussion at this point of the calendar: it’ll fall to the back burner or we can throw mud at the wall and conjure up ridiculous scenarios.

So…let’s get weird.

For the past several years, Shayne Schafer has taken the reins on maintaining the state championship game record book that we’ve posted. Once again, Shayne has come through and updated the file well in advance of this week’s games at Cumberland Valley. Take a look below!

*Feel free to use any and all information found here, but please credit PFH and Shayne Schafer if you use anything from this project. Thanks!

State Championship Game Record Book, pre-2024 State Finals

The 89th NFL Draft was held over the weekend and, for the 89th time, Pennsylvania high school alums were selected. While the state can claim to have had players picked in every NFL Draft to this point, the historical trends have shifted considerably over time. I’ll include any trends or observations that I found interesting below, but let’s start with a recap of Pennsylvania’s six selections in 2024:

This Year’s Selections

Marvin Harrison, Jr. (Arizona Cardinals, 1st Round, 4th Overall)

• St. Joe’s Prep’s 11th NFL Draft pick and first since the trio of D’Andre Swift, John Reid and Jon Runyan in 2020. Harrison spent his freshman year at LaSalle; he is the first former LaSalle player to be selected since Jimmy Morrissey in 2021 and the 7th Explorer chosen all-time.
• Harrison was the highest pick from Pennsylvania since Archbishop Wood’s Kyle Pitts was taken 4th overall by the Falcons in 2021. Saquon Barkley of Whitehall went 2nd overall in 2018.
• Harrison is the 68th wide receiver from Pennsylvania to be chosen in the NFL Draft and the first to be selected in the first round since Nazareth’s Jahan Dotson two years ago. Harrison’s father Marvin Sr. (a Roman Catholic grad) was the 19th overall selection as a wide receiver in the 1996 Draft.
• At 4th overall, Harrison is tied for the highest selection ever by a Pennsylvania wide receiver. In 1962, Williamstown’s Gary Collins was also taken 4th overall by the Browns. In 1950, Turtle Creek’s Leon Hart went first overall as an end, but that position was much closer to today’s tight end than a wide receiver.

Jared Verse (Los Angeles Rams, 1st Round, 19th Overall)

• Not long after Harrison became the 95th first round pick in Pennsylvania history, Verse became the 96th.
• Verse is just the second player from Central Columbia to be chosen in the NFL Draft, joining Mike Morucci. Morucci was picked in the 7th round (177th overall) by the Saints in 1980 as a running back out of Bloomsburg University.
• The fifth player from Pennsylvania drafted out of Florida State, Verse is also the 77th player to be selected by the Rams.
• Verse is the highest-drafted Pennsylvanian defensive lineman since Penn Hills’ Aaron Donald was taken 13th overall in 2014.

Tykee Smith (Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 3rd Round, 89th Overall)

• The 4th NFL Draft pick from Imhotep Charter, joining David Williams and DJ Moore (both in 2018) and Shaka Toney (2021).
• Smith is the 16th Pennsylvania draft pick chosen from Georgia and the first since Mark Webb of Archbishop Wood in 2021.

Jeremiah Trotter, Jr. (Indianapolis Colts, 5th Round, 155th Overall)

• Trotter was the second St. Joe’s Prep grad to be chosen in 2024, giving the school two drafts with multiple players selected in the past five years.
• Trotter is the seventh Pennsylanian to be selected from Clemson, but the first since Valley Forge Military Academy’s Jim Bundren was chosen in 1998.
• He is the 122nd linebacker drafted from a Pennsylvania high school, which is the fifth most-drafted position from the state.

Daequan Hardy (Buffalo Bills, 6th Round, 219th Overall)

• Hardy is the 12th Penn Hills graduate to be selected in the NFL Draft, tying the school with Bethlehem Liberty, Beaver Falls and Mt. Lebanon for the ninth-most picks in state history.
• First Penn Hills player to be selected since Donald.
• Hardy is the 191st Pennsylvanian to be selected out of Penn State, the most of any university.

MJ Devonshire (Las Vegas Raiders, 7th Round, 229th Overall)

• Devonshire is the 15th draft pick from Aliquippa, the fifth-most of any high school in the state. He is the first Quip to be selected since Tommie Campbell was chosen in 2011.
• He is the 177th selection from Pennsylvania to play collegiately at Pitt, which is second only to Penn State.
• He is the 25th Pennsylvania player to be selected by the Raiders, but only the second (joining fellow Pitt alum Morrissey) to be chosen during the team’s time in Las Vegas.

Historical Trends

• Pennsylvania’s six total selections this year equaled last year’s total and held serve with the state’s typical output this century. Since 2000, an average of 7.36 Pennsylvania high school alums have been chosen each year. However, the state historically has produced many more draft picks on an annual basis, as can be seen in the chart below:

From 1938 through 1987, the number of Pennsylvanians picked each year never dipped below double-digits. In fact, twenty or more players were chosen in all but two drafts from 1942 through 1971. The high-water mark was 1953, when 37 players from PA were chosen.

• As one would predict, Penn State and Pitt hold a commanding lead over all other universities in producing draft picks with Pennsylvania natives. All colleges with at least 15 draft picks are shown below:

• Harrison and Verse gave Pennsylvania two first round picks for the 26th time. The other occurrences are shown below (click to enlarge):

• Finally, here are a few quick lists of the most popular characteristics of PA high school alums in the NFL Draft:

Positions Played by Drafted Players

Drafted Players by Team

Drafted Players by Round

I’ve made two updates to the Harrisburg Patriot-News State Ranking Database.

First, I’ve added a sheet where you can view the first and latest date any team was ranked by the Patriot-News. Note that some schools show the ranking dates as “12/30/1899”; this is just Google Sheets’ way of saying “they’ve never been ranked.”

Second, due to page loading errors and crashing caused by a WAY-too-big spreadsheet, I’ve broken the all-time ranking sheet into more manageable chunks. Hopefully this allows everyone to look at the data, albeit in three sections.

Links:

First/Last Rank Date Sheet, by school

Weekly Rankings, 1988-1998

Weekly Rankings, 1999-2009

Weekly Rankings, 2010-2022

Pennsylvania high school football entered a new chapter in 1988 with the birth of the statewide playoff system. This created a path for teams to be crowned state champion (on the field, anyway) for the first time.

This new era led to the creation of the first subjective statewide polls, which the Harrisburg Patriot-News began that same year. In this database, all presently known state rankings have been documented. I’ll break up the rest of the important info in bullet points below, and then we’ll take a look at some trends, interesting facts, etc., at the end of this post.

What to Know About This Database

PLEASE look over this section before digging into the data, as many of your questions will be answered here:

• There are missing weeks in this dataset. As of the end of the 2022 season, there are about 577 weeks where we’d expect rankings from the P-N. This dataset has 546 weeks completed as of the posting of this article, so 94.6% of the rankings are input and complete. Not bad! But I’m still searching for 30 hard-to-find rankings to complete the set. Those missing weeks can be found below; if you have any info that can help me fill in these blanks, please let me know.

• Honorable Mention selections were not made in the preseason rankings fr 1989 and 2020. Additionally, no rankings were published for Week 1 in 2020.
• To my knowledge, the Patriot-News rankings were the first subjective statewide rankings in Pennsylvania. Other mathematical systems (like the Saylor Ratings and Dunkel Index) had been published prior to 1988. The Patriot-News rankings were compiled by Rod Frisco from 1988 through about 2009. Since then, they’ve been selected by Eric Epler.
• This database currently consists of 47,833 entries. Due to this size, there are bound to be small errors here and there, but a lot of time has been spent making sure this database is as accurate as possible. At times, there were errors in the rankings themselves, like a team being ranked 10th AND as an Honorable Mention or other copyediting mistakes, and those have been corrected in this database. In 1990 and 1998, Whitehall was ranked in one classification for part of the year, and then a correction was made in later weeks. The same thing happened to Bellwood-Antis in 2019, Cambridge Springs in 1989, and may have occurred other times that I haven’t caught yet. I’ve chosen to leave these rankings alone for the time being, but may correct them at a later time.
• I made one edit to the state rankings, but I think I was justified to do so. In the 1997 Class A Final rankings, Riverside (Taylor) was No. 1 and Sharpsville was No. 2. However, Sharpsville had beaten Riverside, 10-7, in the state title game a few days before. I’m feel confident that this was a typo or a transcription error of some sort, but if someone can correct me, I’ll switch the rankings back.
• Teams have been listed in the tables by the name the school had prior to any consolidation or split. So you’ll see a row for Downingtown, a row for Downingtown East, and one for Downingtown West, for example.
• Teams were also listed with the district they were a member of in that year. For example, early years will show Mount Carmel in District 11, while more recent years will have them in District 4. The only exception to this involves the old District 12. Prior to the late 1990s (I believe), the PIAA designated teams in the far Northeastern part of the state as District 12 before folding them into District 2. To prevent confusion with the current District 12 (the Philadelphia Public & Catholic Leagues), I used District 2 for all of these schools throughout their ranking histories.
• Some of the tables shown here have “Rank Points” and “Average Rank Points” columns. This was just an informal way to tally the quality of each team’s ranking at a raw and average level. Points were assigned similar to a track meet or the college football AP poll (10 points for 1st, 9 points for 2nd, etc.). A higher average means a team is ranked highly more often than a team with a lower average.

A Few Notable Things About the Data…

Let’s get to the fun part. You can find links to the data at the bottom of the post, but let’s dig in and look at a couple interesting things here:

• The first-ever top-ranked teams? In 1988, the preseason Number 1 teams were North Hills (4A), Aliquippa (3A), Sto-Rox (2A) and Dunmore (1A). Names that have had relevance over the years, to say the least.
• The number of Honorable Mention teams in each class has remained fairly stable over Epler’s tenure, especially since the advent of six classes. Most weeks, each class has between five and seven HM teams. Frisco, particularly in the 1990s, named many more HM teams per class. Some weeks featured as many as 24 HM teams in one classification. However, I don’t think this has dramatically impacted the overall data. Below is a chart showing how many total teams were ranked each year. It’s been fairly level over time when you take into account that some dips are due to years missing several weeks (and COVID shortening the 2020 season, of course).

• Total teams to be ranked No. 1 all-time? 112. I don’t know about you, but this number was quite a bit higher than I had expected.
• Southern Columbia has been ranked for 535 weeks, 200 of which at No. 1. Both are most in the state. This means the Tigers have been ranked for 98% of known weeks since 1988. They’ve been No. 1 for nearly 37% of those weeks.
• Here are the 15 schools with the most weeks at No. 1:

• Weeks at No. 1 by PIAA District:

• Percentage of all ranked teams to come from each district:

• Of the 95% of weeks found so far, 51.6% of ranked teams come from the Eastern part of the state (Districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 11 & 12), while 48.4% come from the West.
• Teams with the most weeks ranked at each spot:

• One more table, just for fun. Here are the schools with the most all-time weeks in the rankings without rising above a certain spot. In other words, Wilson has been ranked for more weeks than any other school that has not reached No. 1. As always, remember that this data is only based on the 95% of found rankings and may change as additional weeks are input:

LINKS TO THE DATA

All-Time Weekly Rankings

School-by-School Data

All-Time Weekly No. 1 Ranked Teams