Wins List Updated for 2025

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