You can easily find the history of high school football in a lot of Southern states including, Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina just to name a few.
However, can you find a lot of the history of high school football in Florida?
That answer is very murky at best.
While the FHSAA has maintained scores of every playoff and state championship contest held since the inceptions of the state series in 1963, the FHSAA does not keep track of the regular season scores or anything else for that matter.
So outside of the FHSAA Football Record Book for the playoffs, there is no one place you can find the history of high school football in Florida. Not even scores from 2000.
We want to change that.
Starting today we are announcing our efforts to research, going far back as possible, on the history of high school football in Florida. It will be a long-term project, one not expect to be completed for quite a few years, if ever. We want to find the scores, the rosters, the coaches, rankings and All-State teams have been published over the years. We want to bring it to one collective central site.
There are some valuable resources out there that we can access. Quite a few newspapers, for example, have past issues online in the Google News Archives and quite a few more are also available through the University of Florida Digital Archives. Yearbooks have been scanned and placed online through various sites, including Classmates.com and Ancestry.com.
However, with quite a few resources already at our finger tips, it is going to take more than the efforts of one, two or even three people to bring a full database together.
This is where, you, the viewer comes in with this project.
You can easily sign up to help with the project, by sending me a simple email with the schools (with exceptions to certain schools that have already been completed) you want to research for scores, historical information or whatever you feel you can contribute to. There will be simple guidelines given to you that will help you understand what we are looking for.
If you are interested in helping us get started in collecting the information, drop me a line at floridahsfootball@gmail.com.
Also in the near future you can helps contribute to our efforts through monetary donations. More details will be released once this is set up.