Pennsylvania Football History

In 1988, the PIAA finally instituted a statewide football playoff. In conjunction with this, Rod Frisco of the Harrisburg Patriot-News began publishing state rankings for each of the then four classes on a weekly basis. Now reaching over 600 weekly rankings since that first list came out in the late summer of 1988, there is a deep well of information to dip into for us to look at statewide rankings in Pennsylvania.

State rankings had existed on a sporadic basis prior to this, including the mathematical one devised by Dr. Roger Saylor. But Frisco’s rankings were the most prominent and by far longest-lasting rankings in the state. While Frisco retired years ago, the Patriot-News (and PennLive) have continued these rankings to the present day. In my opinion, this lineage of rankings is the state standard due to the Patriot-News having been high school football’s newspaper of record in Pennsylvania for decades.

Before we start, I want to say a few things. First, I highly respect the work that Frisco, Eric Epler and everyone else at the Patriot-News has done over the years on their rankings. Creating statewide rankings is a fun but monumental task that invites plenty of criticism from readers. Distilling the top ten teams in a classification of about 140 schools (prior to 2016) is Herculean; doing so in the current six-class system (“only” 90-ish schools per class) is only a little less insane. None of the data presented here is meant to critique the accuracy of any of these rankings. In fact, a lot of this data made me even more impressed with the work Frisco, Epler, et al., did over the years.

Second, we all need to understand that many major shifts have happened over the past 38 years that we must consider when revisiting the rankings. The switch from four classes to six in 2016 is a major one, of course. Another is the expansion of the PIAA playoffs from just four teams per classification in the early years to the 16-team brackets we have today, as imbalanced and wonky as they can be when wedging district playoffs into them. The addition of the Philadelphia Public and Catholic Leagues nearly 20 years ago opened up a new corner of the state to the rankings, as those teams weren’t included until they formally joined the PIAA. Gathering reliable statewide information is likely much easier today than it was in the late 1980s, so that cannot be discounted, either. Finally, all of the data shown below is based on what I have at the moment. There are still a handful of weeks that I haven’t found, but I’m still working on finding every last one of them. As of now, more than 94% of the weekly state rankings are in my dataset.

The First State Ranking

The focus of this post will be to analyze how preseason No. 1 teams fared in the state playoffs, but let’s start with a look at the very first state rankings, which were published by the Patriot-News on September 1, 1988. Four of the teams included in either the Top 10 or honorable mention sections (Monaca, Wilkes-Barre GAR & United) are now part of full district mergers or football co-ops. East Stroudsburg also appeared in these rankings long before the high school split into two campuses.

CLASS A

1. Dunmore
2. Clairton
3. Camp Hill
4. Canton
5. Minersville
6. Southern Columbia
7. Marian Catholic
8. Cambridge Springs
9. Rochester
10. Windber

CLASS AA

1. Sto-Rox
2. Lakeland
3. Mount Carmel
4. Danville
5. Northgate
6. Westmont Hilltop
7. Tyrone
8. Bethlehem Catholic
9. Delone Catholic
10. Wilkes-Barre GAR

CLASS AAA

1. Aliquippa
2. Berwick
3. Mount Pleasant
4. Bald Eagle Area
5. Middletown
6. Academy Park
7. North Schuylkill
8. Nazareth
9. Juniata
10. Bishop McDevitt (Harrisburg)

CLASS AAAA

1. North Hills
2. Central Bucks West
3. Cathedral Prep
4. Woodland Hills
5. Mt. Lebanon
6. Ridley
7. Brashear
8. Williamsport
9. North Allegheny
10. Gateway

Including honorable mention teams, every PIAA district aside from District 9 was represented. The WPIAL led the way with 19 teams ranked across all classes, while District 3 had 11 and District 11 had 10. Sto-Rox would immediately lose its top billing in AA after Week 1, as the two smaller classes each saw four different schools ranked No. 1 at some point during the season.

Teams to be Ranked No. 1 in the Preseason

Four schools have been ranked No. 1 in the preseason by the Patriot-News/PennLive at least ten times: Southern Columbia, Aliquippa, Berwick and St. Joe’s Prep. Gateway has the most years ranked No. 1 – three – without capturing a state championship.

In all, 65 different schools have opened a season as the state’s top-ranked team in their class:

Preseason No. 1 Teams in the PIAA Playoffs

There are two ways to go about connecting the dots between the preseason rankings and the teams that end up winning state championships four months later. The first method is to follow those preseason top teams through the year and list where they ended up. The second is to look backward from December and see where the state champs began their year. We’ll do both below.

Top-Ranked Preseason Teams and How They Fared

An important caveat to remember before we begin is how I’m referring to state playoffs. I’m considering anything in a classification’s round of 16 as the First Round, the round of 8 as the State Quarterfinals, the round of 4 as the State Semifinals, and the State Championship game as the State Finals. This fits into the calendar with district playoffs like the WPIAL, District 1 at the larger classes, District 6 at the smaller classes, etc., whose champions enter the state tournament in the advanced rounds. It may seem odd, but it’s the cleanest way to outline this, I think. The PIAA playoffs have always been a Frankenstein set-up; if you don’t believe me, text a friend from another state and try to concisely explain how we run a state tournament. But I think this method makes the most sense.

When looking at preseason No. 1 teams and their season result, two datapoints interested me. First, there was the unsurprising fact that teams ranked first in the preseason had a more than 50% chance of appearing in the state championship game. Sixty teams who were preseason No. 1s won state championships from 1988 to 2025, which comes out to 34.9%. Another 15.7% of top-ranked teams finished as state runners-up. Having slightly better than a coin flip’s chances of reaching Mechanicsburg in December likely sounds good to Pittsburgh Central Catholic, Pine-Richland, Bonner, Avonworth, Southern Columbia and Clairton, the preseason top-ranked teams in 2026.

Preseason No. 1 teams to win that season’s PIAA title:

The second and more interesting datapoint isn’t as positive, however. Since 1988, 33 preseason No. 1-ranked teams failed to make the state playoffs (as defined above). This means that 19.2% of teams chosen to win the state title in August were turning in their pads sometime in November while at least 16 other teams in their classification were still playing. To be fair, 12 of these 33 teams played in the earliest era of the PIAA playoffs from 1988-1993. In those years, only the top four teams statewide made the state playoffs; oftentimes this resulted in some of the best teams in the state not even making the postseason due to the very limited field and qualification procedures that relied on unpopular point rating systems.

After not happening at all from 2015 through 2023, though, four different preseason No. 1s missed the state playoffs in the past two seasons – 2024’s Aliquippa and Southern Columbia along with 2025’s St. Joe’s Prep and Bonner. This historically has most often happened in the largest, most competitive PIAA districts, so it usually is a product of that district’s playoff being grueling rather than a preseason No. 1 being overhyped in some way. The WPIAL has been the hardest-hit by this over the course of the statewide playoff era.

Teams to be ranked first in the preseason and miss the state playoffs:

Where State Champions Were Ranked in the Preseason

Starting at the end of each season and looking backward gives us a different perspective on how state championship teams’ seasons evolve. Of the 172 state champions between 1988 and 2025, 113 of them were ranked in the top three of the preseason poll. However, fourteen(!) of them were unranked in August. These unranked teams are mostly clustered in two timeframes: the information-limited early years of 1988-1992 and 2004-2005. Each of those two later years had two preseason unranked teams win state titles, meaning four of the eight state champs in those back-to-back seasons were unranked. Three of those four were WPIAL teams (Thomas Jefferson in 2004, McKeesport and Franklin Regional in 2005) that played through the two bigger classifications, so they may have been overlooked on a statewide level due to other tough teams in their own district. The fourth unranked state champ in that era was Lansdale Catholic in 2004, which was coming off a 6-5 season in 2003 but went 14-1 to capture the AA title.

Those two windows account for 10 of the 14 unranked state champs. The entire list is here:

Unsurprisingly, this list contains some of the great dark horse state championship runs in PIAA history. The final entry on the list – Quaker Valley – is, for my money, the most unlikely state champion ever. In 2017, the Quakers avenged their sole loss by beating Aliquippa 2-0 in the WPIAL AAA final, then beat Sharon and Middletown to finish 14-1. Head Coach Jerry Veshio took over less than three weeks prior to the season opener when the previous coach stepped down and took a team that missed the district playoffs the year before all the way. In 1996, Sharpsville had gone 8-3, but had an overall record of 29-70-1 in the decade leading up to its 1997 state title. Perry was a Pittsburgh City League power for much of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, but beat Berwick to become the first (and still only) City League team to win a state championship.

Interestingly, beginning the season unranked is actually the fourth most common preseason ranking for an eventual state champion. Here is the list of state champions by preseason ranking position:

There has yet to be a season where every preseason No. 1 won the state championship, but a few years have gotten very close:

• In 2014, preseason No. 1s St. Joe’s Prep, Archbishop Wood and South Fayette all won. Class A champ Bishop Guilfoyle was ranked 10th to begin the year; preseason No. 1 Pittsburgh North Catholic missed the state playoffs.
• In 2018, St. Joe’s Prep, Cathedral Prep, Aliquippa, Southern Columbia and Farrell all finished where they began, but AAAAA was won by preseason No. 3 Penn Hills. The top-ranked team in the preseason was again Archbishop Wood, who fell in the state semifinals.
• 2020 saw St. Joe’s Prep, Pine-Richland, Thomas Jefferson, Central Valley and Southern Columbia take the five largest classes after being ranked first in the preseason. The only miss was in Class A where preseason No. 6 Steelton-Highspire won the title, not No. 1 Clairton, who lost in the state quarters.
• 2023 was tantalizingly close to being a perfect preseason poll for the top-ranked teams. St. Joe’s Prep, Imhotep, Belle Vernon, Southern Columbia and Steelton-Highspire finished where they started. In AAAA, preseason No. 2(!) Aliquippa won instead of Bishop McDevitt (which lost in the state semis).

Finally, five seasons have seen zero state champs who were preseason No. 1s – 1988, 1990, 1993, 1998 and not again until…last season. In 2025, state champs LaSalle, Southern Lehigh, Avonworth and Clairton were all No. 2 in the preseason. Roman Catholic (No. 3) and Southern Columbia (No. 8) were the other state champs.

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