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Beyond the State Level There is currently no such thing as a high school football national championship game, but don’t be surprised if such an event is hatched soon. There is simply too much interest and too many potential television viewers for a high school Super Bowl to prevent it from becoming a reality. An annual high school national champion has been recognized by a poll of some sort dating all the way to 1910, when Oak Park (Illinois) High School won its first of four consecutive national champion- ships as chosen by the National Sports News Ser- vice. Until 1982, the NSNS was the lone entity that dubbed a mythical high school national champion,

Bishop Gorman High (in orange) is one of a handful of national

powers in high school football.

but then USA Today got involved. The “nation’s newspaper” be- gan printing a weekly Super 25, which heightened interest in, and awareness of, gridiron powers from coast to coast. In the past 15 years, schools whose names regularly appear in

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