A national championship in high school football is an honor awarded annually by various organizations to their selection of the best high school football team in the United States .
61-412: The title is a " mythical national championship ", as travel demands and the number of high schools spread across the country prevent the championship from being settled competitively on the gridiron . Instead, the national championships are based on rankings from prep football media analysts, such as USA Today , or algorithmic rankings. There have also been some efforts over the years at organizing
122-524: A "Large School Division" (NCAA Division I) and a "Small School Division" (NCAA Division II, NCAA Division III , and the NAIA). Note: * Alcorn State , St. Augustine's , and Stillman College are listed by a source as having been named black national champions by blackcollegebaseball.com , but the year(s) of the championships is not specified by the source; the year could be 2012, since champions were reportedly named that year Because high school sports in
183-504: A "Major Division" ( NCAA Division I ) and a "Mid-Major Division" ( NCAA Division II , NAIA Division I, and NAIA Division II). The following table contains a list of men's black national champions. The following table contains a list of women's black national champions. HBCUs first had a mythical black national champion named in 2002, by blackcollegebaseball.com . More recently, a black national champion has been named since 2015, by blackcollegenines.com . The latter names champions for
244-718: A 35-game winning streak and six state championships. The school's football stadium was named in Brown's honor. The Tigers play their home games at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium . The stadium currently holds 16,600 people and is named after former Tiger player and head coach Paul Brown . Besides being the regular season home of the Massillon Tiger Football team, the stadium hosts Ohio High School Athletic Association state football playoff games, divisional championship games, as well as numerous other activities such as band shows and other sports including soccer. Every fall,
305-556: A 9th to 12th grade secondary school within the Massillon City School District in the city of Massillon, Ohio . The school colors are orange and black, and the school's athletic teams are known as the Massillon Tigers. The original Washington High School was constructed in 1913 and used to sit on the corner of Oak and 1st street southeast in downtown Massillon. The current Washington High School
366-576: A career in sports medicine to earn college credits in high school. Rated an "Excellent" school district by the Ohio Department of Education . Football came to the Massillon in 1894 with the first high school football game between Massillon High School and Canton Central High School. In the early years, the players consisted of working boys because most boys did not attend high school. By 1904 more boys began attending school past 8th grade. 1909
427-701: A champion on the field were the Bowl Coalition (1992–94) and Bowl Alliance (1995–97). However, their effort to host a national championship was hampered by the lack of participation of the Pac-10 and Big Ten champions, who instead opted to play in the Rose Bowl . The BCS was an improvement on the Bowl Coalition and Bowl Alliance because it included the Rose Bowl and the champions of what were then
488-689: 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. The following year, on December 30, the game featured Pine Bluff of Arkansas , which defeated Baton Rouge by a score of 26–0. This series of games proved difficult to organize, due to some states' prohibition of postseason play; Pine Bluff, for example, had to receive
549-521: A great season. If they choose to vote you number one, then you're the national champion. But a national champion is a mythical national champion, and I think you guys ought to know that. It's mythical. "Mythical national champion" is a term that has been used since at least 1920 for a championship won by an NCAA Division I football team , especially for titles won before the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system began in 1998 . Before
610-529: A head in 2003 when the AP poll refused to vote the BCS champions ( LSU ) as their national champions. Instead, the AP voted USC as national champions for the 2003 season. This resulted in disputes between which team was the real champion, and as a result, the 2003 BCS Champion is not unanimous. As a result of this controversy, the AP removed itself from the BCS formula in 2004. Furthermore, because of AP Poll policies, should
671-473: A more recent listing. 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, and press clippings, and considered
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#1732802582948732-548: A national champion during this time was complicated by the fact that the champions of major conferences were tied to specific bowls (for example, the Big 8 champion was tied to the Orange Bowl ), and the top two teams in the nation often played in different bowls. A few bowls over the years featured a #1 vs. #2 matchup; one example was the 1987 Fiesta Bowl , played January 2 following the 1986 season. Two attempts to annually crown
793-517: A relatively sizable number of repeat champions in Johlfs' rating system but saw a significant drop in its number of champions under Sollenberger. As for Huff, he too had his own unique way of determining champions: "I try to put credibility in the listings by making them consistent with local and state rankings. I try to look for dominant teams in an area who have a good track record." Informal intersectional games deemed as "national championship games" by
854-451: 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. Todd Dodge ( Southlake, Texas Carroll from 2004 to 2006 and Austin, Texas Westlake in 2020) is the only head coach 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
915-491: A single-game playoff for the national championship. The oldest of the rating systems, the National Sports News Service, was begun by Arthur H. "Art" Johlfs—who originally started naming champions informally in 1927 as a 21 year old high school coach and official, but did so more formally starting in 1959 after enlarging his network of supporting hobbyists to receive reports from six separate areas of
976-513: A special waiver from its state's high school sports association to participate in the game (even some schools that were eligible for postseason games like Massillon Washington were unable to play in the contest, since their association only allowed postseason games through the month of November). Also in 1939, the National Sports Council, chaired by columnist Grantland Rice , staged a national championship game Christmas night in
1037-503: A swing step. The Tiger Swing band begins every home football game with the traditional hometown songs of "Massillon Will Shine", "Stand Up and Cheer" (to acknowledge the other team), “Eye of the Tiger”, “Seven Nation Army”, The W.H.S. Alma Mater, and The Star Spangled Banner/ The National Anthem. At the beginning of each half time show, they perform what is known as "Opening Routine". This is a tradition that goes back for decades and consists of
1098-579: A team named as a Helms national champion claims the title for the selected seasons. Tournament/playoff winners Retrospective selections In 1941, Southern University , coached by the famed football coach Ace Mumford , defeated North Carolina Central , 48–42, in the National Invitational Intercollegiate Basketball Tournament; this tournament was held because the NIT would not invite HBCUs at
1159-573: A team under a postseason ban finish first in the AP Poll, the AP will recognise such team as the AP's national champion. The AP will also not recognise further penalties, which resulted in a vacated national championship in 2004 by most authorities but the AP still recognizes USC (which was stripped by the NCAA of wins and the BCS committee of its championship) despite the Reggie Bush penalties. Since
1220-760: A universal national champion for high school football. Since 2000, five teams have received a consensus 100% of selectors: Las Vegas (NV) Bishop Gorman (2016), Santa Ana (CA) Mater Dei (2017, 2021) and Bellflower (CA) St. John Bosco (2019, 2022). Since 1982, four schools have received the most selectors in consecutive seasons: Concord (CA) De La Salle (2000–2003), Santa Ana (CA) Mater Dei (2017–2018), Southlake (TX) Carroll (2004–2006) and Hampton ( VA ) (1996–1997). Years selected for overall national championships are denoted by boldfaced type below; years selected for specialty national championships that were reserved for specific kinds of schools (such as for private, public, medium or small-sized schools only) are in regular type. It
1281-514: Is derived from the National High School Football Record Book (2001), unless otherwise specified; *—listings from an earlier source do not necessarily match listings from a more recent source—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. No definitive ranking service exists to declare
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#17328025829481342-591: Is national championship recognition that is not explicitly competitive. This phrase has often been invoked in reference to American college football , because the NCAA does not sponsor a playoff-style tournament or recognize official national champions for the Football Bowl Subdivision . The relevant recognition before 1998 came from various entities, including coach polls and media ballots, which each voted to recognize their own national champions, and
1403-668: 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 Note: all information between 1904 and 2000
1464-477: Is similar to the newspaper decision used in early boxing matches. Starting in 1998, the recognition comes from the Bowl Championship Series and College Football Playoff , neither is sanctioned by the NCAA. If there are any Big Ten teams that shoot for a national championship, they're damn fools...You play to win the Big Ten championship, and if you win it and go to the Rose Bowl and win it, then you've had
1525-446: Is theoretically possible that some early national championship games held when segregation was legal may have restricted qualifying schools to all- white rosters, but in the absence of incriminating documentation, all championship games are currently assumed to have been open to all teams and are therefore listed below in boldface. Mythical national championship A mythical national championship (sometimes abbreviated MNC )
1586-511: The AP High School Football National Champions nine times - 1935, 1936, 1939, 1940, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1959, 1961. McKinley Bulldogs The rivalry between these schools has been ongoing for over a century. Massillon leads the series 76-53-5. Rivalry is known as one of the first rivalries in high school football history. The rivalry between them is one of the most popular rivalries in the country and
1647-478: The American Red Cross ' War Fund. The series was described by Ray Meyer , coach of the losing 1945 DePaul team, as "the games for the national championship". The NCAA champion prevailed in all three games. During the early years of the two tournaments, the NCAA and NIT competed against each other, giving rise to debate over their relative prowess. In 1939, the inaugural year of the NCAA tournament,
1708-808: The ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia . As with the Helms selections, the Premo-Porretta poll recognized the 1938 and 1939 NIT Champions as national champions; in addition to 1939, the poll's national championship selections differed from the results of the NCAA Tournament in 1941, 1943, 1944, 1945, and 1947. During World War II , from 1943 to 1945, the NCAA, NIT and Madison Square Garden cooperated to host "mythical national championship games" between winners of each year's NCAA and NIT tournaments in order to benefit
1769-544: The Helms Athletic Foundation . The Helms Foundation's Bill Schroeder named a national champion from 1901 to 1982, with his selections from 1901 to 1941 being named retroactively in 1943 and 1957. The Helms champion, for the years in which the NIT and NCAA post-season tournaments were played, reflected the winners of the 1938 NIT and 1939 NIT, as well as the winners for all years of the NCAA Tournament except for 1939, 1940, 1944 and 1954. Most recently,
1830-637: 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. After World War II the National Federation of State High School Associations also began discouraging intersectional postseason games. Concord, California De La Salle won 12 total national championships from 1994 to 2015, including 6 in
1891-530: The 2014 season, the College Football Playoff —in association with Division I FBS collegiate conferences and independent schools , along with six bowl games —has been played among the top four teams (as selected by a thirteen-member committee) to play two semifinal bowl games followed by a CFP National Championship Game between the semifinal winners. However, the panel has been criticized for failing to recognize champions of conferences outside
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1952-485: The BCS, polls in which coaches and/or sportswriters voted, such as the AP , UPI , and USA Today polls, awarded championships. This led to seasons in which two or more teams could claim to have won the national championship. Due to this, the NCAA does not designate a national champion for the sport in its record book. Since the 1930s, each top team has traditionally played a single postseason bowl game. The process of selecting
2013-1002: The Helms Athletic Foundation, including the Kansas, Purdue, Stanford, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, Syracuse, and Washington State. LSU claims the 1935 championship by virtue of winning the American Legion Bowl game against Pittsburgh in a match-up of regional powers. Multiple schools claim a national championship based on their NIT championships: Temple (1938), Long Island (in 1939 and 1941), West Virginia (1942), DePaul (1945), Utah (1947), San Francisco (1949), BYU (1951 and 1966), La Salle (1952), Seton Hall (1953), Holy Cross (1954), Duquesne (1955), Louisville (1956), Xavier (1958), Providence (1961 and 1963), and Southern Illinois (1967). Long Island (1939) and Kentucky (1933 and 1954) also recognize their selections as national champion by
2074-497: The Helms Foundation's Bill Schroeder during seasons that a different NCAA Champion was crowned. The following table is a partial list of schools that claim a national championship from the pre-NCAA Tournament era of college basketball. See also Helms Athletic Foundation basketball national titles . Not all schools recognize national championship honors bestowed by third-party selectors, although almost every school with
2135-459: The NCAA Tournament steadily gained prominence, it became the sole source of naming the national champion. In some years college teams won playoff series or tournaments played on the court for a national championship, such as the annual AAU tournaments. In addition, many schools claim or recognize pre-tournament era national college basketball championships by virtue of being selected retrospectively by third-party selectors, such as Bill Schroeder at
2196-461: The NCAA champions over the NIT champions in the Red Cross games, The New York Times indicated that many teams who could potentially get bids to enter either tournament would probably choose the NCAA tournament "because it involves stronger competition." In 1950, City College of New York won both the NIT and the NCAA tournaments in the same season, coincidentally defeating Bradley University in
2257-574: The NCAA since 1939. Prior to the advent of national post-season college basketball tournaments, beginning with the NAIA national men's basketball championship in 1937, the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in 1938 and the NCAA tournament in 1939, virtually no third-party organizations selected basketball national champions. The Official NCAA Men's Basketball Records Book lists title selections of pre-tournament era teams by
2318-407: The NIT was generally considered to be superior. During the 1940s, the relative status of the two tournaments was unclear, and thus some years produced disputed national championship claims. Some contemporary sources claim superiority for the NIT during this time. In 1943, in a shrewd competitive move the NCAA tournament began sharing Madison Square Garden with the NIT. In 1945, following victories by
2379-642: The USA Today poll, often claim to be national champions, and the press calls them "mythical national champions". In the earliest days of the National Football League , the NFL championship was determined by a formula and by the votes of the NFL owners. In three instances, 1920 , 1921 and 1925 , this led to disputed titles. In 1932 , two teams tied atop the standings led to a one-game playoff for
2440-847: The United States such as football and basketball are state -centered sports involving thousands of schools, it would be almost impossible to have a national championship playoff. A single-game playoff for football, however, was attempted in 1938 and 1939, it was particularly difficult at that time due to many states' prohibition of postseason games. Nearly all states crown several champions in different classifications, which are not uniform from state to state, based upon school enrollments. Some publications and internet sites release nationwide rankings for high school sports based on polls or mathematical formulas which take into account various factors like average margin of victory and strength of schedule. Schools that finish atop these rankings, particularly
2501-488: The band's entrance ("Turn Arounds") followed by "Fanfare", "Tiger Rag" and "Carry On". This entire routine is marched at 180 beats per minute and is practiced from the beginning of the rehearsals through the entire season. Each home game the Swing Band performs a new halftime show for the crowd, always with a theme. The 2020 edition of the band includes two Drum Majors, four Majorettes, and the mascot, Obie. The Swing Band
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2562-481: The booster club provides a live tiger cub named "Obie" who is on the sidelines for each home football game. So strong is the tradition and history, the booster club provides each baby boy born in Massillon a miniature football. In summer 2008, due to the success of the Tigers' athletic programs, ESPN nominated the city of Massillon as a candidate for Titletown USA . The final results ended with Massillon finishing in
2623-408: The championship game of both tournaments, and thus united the titles. After the fall-out from the 1951 gambling and point-shaving scandals, the NCAA tournament pulled out of Madison Square Garden. With conference champions and the majority of the top-ranked teams participating in it, the NCAA tournament since then came to be regarded as the more important post-season tourney and the sole determiner of
2684-399: The championship, which was made permanent the next year. There has been some sort of NFL playoff ever since, and as the league grew, so too did the tournament, which eventually took form as the single-elimination tournament it is today. Massillon Washington High School Washington High School , commonly referred to as Massillon High School or Massillon Washington High School , is
2745-466: The country. One of those hobbyists was Barrett Conley "Barry" Sollenberger, representing the NSNS' Southwest Sports News Service regional office. Sollenberger was the facilitator of a similar poll for Joe Namath 's National Prep Sports magazine in 1976 and 1977, before that publication was discontinued (its Hertz Trophy was awarded each year to Moeller of Cincinnati , which also happened to be both of
2806-515: The five major conferences for participation in the CFP or the New Year's Six games. At lower levels of play in college football, mythical national champion crowns also continue to exist, separate from NCAA and NAIA championships, in the form of the black college football national championship . This is competed for by teams from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In the present day,
2867-467: The nation's six most powerful conferences. It attempted to eliminate uncertainty by ranking college teams and inviting the top two teams at the end of the regular season to play in a championship game . These teams were determined by the BCS ranking formula, which itself used a combination of human voter polls and computer rankings. The process of selecting the two best teams for the BCS championship game had nonetheless resulted in controversy , which reached
2928-434: The national championship, although following the taint of the gambling scandals, the NIT was still considered a quality tournament for some time afterward. The NCAA built on the momentum of three consecutive Red Cross "mythical national championship" game victories over the NIT, eventually outmaneuvering the NIT by adeptly avoiding permanent damage from the 1951 gambling and point-shaving scandals and by adding more teams. As
2989-1099: The only brothers to lead a school to a national championship. At 63 years, McKinley ( Canton, Ohio ) holds the record for longest span between first title (1934) and most recent (1997). Bruce Rollinson of Mater Dei High School ( Santa Ana, California ) holds the largest span for a coach with 27 years between first title (1994) and most recent (2021) with 4 additional outright or shared titles during that span (1996, 2017, 2018, 2020). ESPN HIGH Elite 25 (ESPNHE25) ESPN RISE FAB 50 (ESPNRF50) ESPN HS FAB 50 (ESPNHSF50) Powerade FAB 50 (PF50) FAB 50 (F50) 2007 2007–2010 2011 2012 2013–2014 Rivals High 100 (RH100) 2008–2012 SBLive /Sports Illustrated Power 25 (SBLP25) High School Football America Medium Schools Top 25 (HSFAMST25) High School Football America Small Schools Top 25 (HSFASST25) High School Football America National Top 100 (HSFANT300) High School Football America National Top 300 (HSFANT300) 2015, 2018–2019 2015, 2018–2019 2017–2022 2023–present Bold type indicates current selectors Notes: *—it
3050-461: 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. Notably, Florida had
3111-570: The retroactive end-of-year Premo-Porretta Power Poll has provided the first national rankings of college basketball teams for the 1895–96 through the 1947–48 seasons. (No regular, recognized national polling took place prior to the establishment of the Associated Press Poll and the Coaches Poll for college basketball prior to the 1948–49 and 1950–51 seasons, respectively. ) The Premo-Porretta rankings were published in 2009 in
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#17328025829483172-502: The school's enrollment size. 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 postseason playoffs . 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; this ended up allowing multiple teams to repeat as champions, drawing some criticism to Johlfs. Sollenberger, on
3233-614: The state of Ohio . One of the most notable people part of the rivalry is former Massillon alumni and Cleveland Browns coach Paul Brown. The Massillon Tiger Swing Band was created by George "Red" Bird in 1938 during the Paul Brown era of Massillon football. The band became known as "The Greatest Show in High School Football" and is still a very important part of the Massillon football tradition. The band's swing style includes moving formations and musicians marching with
3294-589: The time. NCCU was still designated national champions by the Associated Negro Press that year. There would be several other attempts at creating HBCU national tournaments in the 1940s. In late 1947, National Championships, Inc. announced that they would begin hosting a postseason football bowl game and basketball tournament for HBCUs; the basketball tournament does not appear to have been held. Jet magazine began sponsoring HBCU basketball polls in 1974. Dr. Cavil's Classic Cuts names champions for
3355-627: The top 4. Prior to the implementation of the playoff system in 1972, Massillon won 24 State Championships, including two in 1950 and 1951 in American football under Coach Chuck Mather and with player Bobby Grier . In 2023, the Tigers ended a 53-year drought, winning their first state title in the OHSAA Playoff era, defeating Archbishop Hoban by a final score of 7–2. The Tigers had previously been playoff runners-up in 1980, 1982, 2005, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Massillon has been recognized as
3416-498: The top picks of the NSNS). Despite Sollenberger publicly disagreeing with Johlfs' choice for champion in 1978 (siding with St. Paul of Santa Fe Springs, California over Annandale of Virginia ), Johlfs apparently still respected the way that Sollenberger actively ran his southwest office—enough so that he turned the NSNS rankings over to him, starting in 1979. The NSNS poll then remained under Sollenberger's management through 1999 (along
3477-789: 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. 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
3538-414: The way he also retroactively picked back as far as 1910, although at least one source has the NSNS even making a 1904 selection as well). It was then merged away into R. Douglas "Doug" Huff's year-old, competing FAB 50 poll starting in 2000—which in turn continued on through 2014 with Mark J. Tennis apparently retaining the rights to it. An early compilation listing of NSNS champions does not necessarily match
3599-534: The winner of this crown at the NCAA Division I FCS level is generally considered to be the winner of the Celebration Bowl , DI FCS's only bowl game. The national championship of collegiate basketball that is officially recognized by the main governing body for collegiate athletics in the United States, the NCAA , has been awarded to the champion of an annual national post-season tournament run by
3660-703: Was Massillon's first undefeated football team. From 1910 to 1920 high school football in Massillon grew and improved, and by 1916 they were named the Scholastic Champions of Ohio. The school mascot, the Tiger, was adopted from the city's former professional football team known as the Massillon Tigers . Paul Brown , a 1925 graduate of Washington High School, returned to Massillon in 1932 to begin his renowned coaching career. In his nine years at Massillon, Brown posted an 80–8–2 record which included
3721-554: Was constructed in 1992 adjacent to Paul Brown Tiger Stadium . Washington High School provides programs including college readiness and vocational technical careers. Developing Resources for Education and Athletics in Massillon (D.R.E.A.M) is a collaborative effort through the Paul & Carol David Foundation, Massillon schools, Walsh University and the Aultman Health Foundation and provides students interested in
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