Below is a list of Louisiana state high school football champions sanctioned by various organizations since they began holding formal high school football state championship games in Louisiana in 1909, as well as informal state championship games held since 1907. High schools in the state are currently divided between the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, a small number of independent private schools, and those private schools that choose to compete across state lines for Midsouth Association of Independent Schools honors. In the past schools also competed under the auspices of the Louisiana Interscholastic Athletic and Literary Organization, the Louisiana Independent School Association, the Louisiana Christian School Athletic Association, and the Association of Christian Educators of Louisiana.
Background Although numerous late-season games are known to have been hastily scheduled between prominent teams and informally dubbed "state championship" games back in high school football's early years, these games generally based their authority solely on general acclamation and were held without formal, independent third-party sponsors. Several early games are notable exceptions to this, but even then these games usually featured a home team as a draw; neutral playing sites may have given this series of games a stronger sense of legitimacy.
For what it is worth, in high school football's earliest days multiple New Orleans-area regional organizations—that were at times administered by Tulane University—came and went that could have theoretically also determined de facto state champions based sheerly on the lack of existing teams in other parts of the state. The first of these organizations, the Interscholastic Football League, was sponsored by the Tulane Athletic Association and began play for the city's pennant during the 1895 campaign.
Former championship selectors
Unsponsored state championship games (1907–1929) In high school football's early years, a number of prominent schools added late season games against other strong teams and claimed that these games would be for the "state championship." In some cases a third team that felt unfairly left out of the process would then challenge the winner of that state championship contest to a game of their own shortly afterward, essentially meaning that there would be a second state championship game that very same season—effectively creating a de facto early form of playoffs, just without the sponsorship of a controlling legal authority that could award a trophy. In 1914 and 1917, there were three or even four games that had been designated as state championships, as the annual State Fair of Louisiana in Shreveport and National Farm and Live Stock Show in New Orleans respectively had staged games for the title that had been considered too early in the season by some schools to truly settle the issue of crowning a champion.
The first ever champion, Jefferson College of Convent, had a campus that consisted of a high school, junior college, and college. At the time, the school regularly scheduled a mixture of high school and university-level club, junior varsity, and varsity teams. It defeated Boys High (later called Warren Easton) of New Orleans in 1907 for the first high school state title, by a score of 27–0.
Louisiana High School Rally (1909) In 1909, the state rally for interscholastic academic and athletic competitions, hosted annually by Louisiana State University, sponsored a state championship game, complete with a trophy. The hometown school, Baton Rouge High, defeated Boys High in the game, 17–5.
Calcasieu–Louisiana Fair (1910) The first annual Calcasieu–Louisiana Fair scheduled a high school football game between the hometown Lake Charles High team and Boys High, billing it as being for the state championship. The game was a very successful draw, as 3,000 of the fair's 10,000 attendees watched LCHS' 17–11 victory.
State Fair of Louisiana (1914–1915) The Shreveport-based State Fair of Louisiana, which was known to host football games in conjunction with the fair—the Louisiana State Fair Classic for college teams, for example—also sponsored a series of games involving high school teams in the 1910s. Although earliest teams do not appear to have been billed as facing off for the state crown, the fair began to promote later games as being for a formal state championship. However, even these games did not necessarily resolve the issue of a true state champion—and indeed may have even actually helped generate further controversy—since the annual fair always scheduled its championship game participants well before the end of the high school football season (meaning that the games may have only reflected the best teams from the first half of the season). Also, the local team from Shreveport High (later called C. E. Byrd) was usually invited to play as the representative of North Louisiana in the state fair's game, which was a particular concern in 1916 when SHS had a down year. Also, the newly-created LHSAA was largely rendering it obsolete any way.
Times–Picayune (1915) The New Orleans Times–Picayune sponsored a game (for the state championship) between two city schools, Easton and New Orleans Jesuit. The two schools had tied 6–6 earlier in the season, so the game was seen as an opportunity to both break the tie and to serve as a fundraiser for the newspaper's Doll and Toy Fund drive for needy children's Christmas presents at the same time. However, Jesuit's starting quarterback had been injured in the first game and was not able to recover in time to participate in the second game. Easton won, 13–12.
What set this state championship game apart from the state fair's game earlier that season is that this one included a private school, the first time that a private school had been allowed to compete for a state crown. Easton had actually approached Shreveport High, the state fair's champion, about playing earlier in the season but was turned down. It is not immediately clear what, if anything, of Easton's offer to play was considered objectionable to SHS.
This game was a forerunner to the annual "Toy Bowl" that the Times–Picayune began sponsoring annually in 1933 to raise money for its Doll and Toy Fund—and was occasionally held in conjunction with state championship games.
National Farm and Live Stock Show and Live Stock Buyers' Convention (1917) The 1917 National Farm and Live Stock Show was held in New Orleans, complete with a relatively early-season state championship football game between Easton and Minden High that was won by Easton, 44–7.
Spalding's Official Foot Ball Guide (1918) Despite the various wartime shortages and Spanish Flu-related travel restrictions and disbandments of teams, apparently enough games did manage to be held in 1918 that Easton would later be described as state champions by a national publication. Otherwise, the new LHSAA passed on designating its own champion, and a proposed, unsponsored championship game between Easton and Winnfield never got past the planning stages.
Texas–Louisiana Football Series (1922–1923) In 1922 and 1923, attempts were made to pair the state champions of Louisiana and Texas in a postseason event.
In 1922, however, without any official explanation, the LHSAA issued a simple statement that it would not endorse any playoff games or otherwise declare a champion for that season (speculation was that the primary playoff contenders were just simply too far spread out geographically from one another to make it worth the effort, especially since they had fared only modestly better over the course of the season than the non-contenders had. With no named LHSAA champion, as far as the Texas–Louisiana Series organizers were concerned, Shreveport High (which had managed to beat, or tie, all of its in-state opponents; its only loss was to an out-of-state team) should be considered the champion of Louisiana for the sake of the game.
The following year, the LHSAA declined to recognize the already-scheduled state championship game between Homer and Morgan City, and declared Morgan City its champion instead. The game was played any way, with Homer winning. Homer was then designated as Louisiana's representative for the planned New Year's Day face-off between the Louisiana and Texas champions at Centenary College, under the proposed backing of the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce.
Louisiana Interscholastic Athletic and Literary Association (1936–1949) The Louisiana Interscholastic Athletic and Literary Association (LIALA) was created for African American high schools in 1935, with the merging of two regional interscholastic organizations and the backing of Southern University. It sponsored its first football championship in 1936.
Magnolia Bowl (1940) An early power in black high school football was McKinley of Baton Rouge, which included a stretch with Eddie Robinson at quarterback. After a McKinley loss in 1941, the game was described by a newspaper account as "the Panthers' first defeat in thirteen years."
McKinley initially declined to join the fledgling LIALA, instead retaining an independent status that would allow it to continue scheduling a slate of elite teams from the surrounding states of Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Despite the distinguished honor of not losing to any of these regional powers during this era, a downside was that McKinley was also not able to acquire any trophies to permanently display in its case since it was not actually a member of an athletic association that awarded any.
In 1939, the Capital City Free Workers offered to host a black state championship game that would include McKinley matched against the LIALA championship game's winner (Bogalusa Central) in a fundraiser for the local Lions Club. In turn, its winner would host a black national championship game on New Year's Day. Ultimately, McKinley ended up opting out of postseason play, leaving Central the overall state champion of record by default and ending any hopes of holding a national championship game.
By the next season McKinley had given in and joined the LIALA but was still ineligible for its state crown because the Panthers did not play enough conference games. The media described that team as being unscored upon and the program as a whole as undefeated going back eight seasons as well as heading into the 1940 postseason. This time McKinley accepted its invitation to the Magnolia Bowl, which was to be played against unbeaten Monroe Colored High.
McKinley was finally able to capture the title of the LIALA as a member in 1942.
Louisiana Interscholastic Athletic and Literary Organization (1950–1969)