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History of Iowa High School Football

High School football has been played in the state of Iowa since the 1890s. When the IHSAA was formed in 1905, members were initially banned from playing football (this stemmed from President Teddy Roosevelt earlier that year calling out college leaders on the brutal play of the game, in hopes that they could "save the sport"). Starting with the 1909 season this ban was lifted, and many schools sponsored the sport in the following years. (The Des Moines Register noted nearly 700 teams played football in 1922.) However, the IHSAA would not crown an official champion for the first time until 63 years later. Much like college football, rankings were used to name mythical champions in the years before the state playoff system was created. The AP named state champions from at least 1950 to 1971 (see Mythical State Champions).

With the coming of the great depression and the second world war, the number of schools playing football decreased dramatically. By 1952 only around 320 schools had football teams, and about 40 of these were playing 6-man football. With the coming of consolidated multi-town school districts in the late 1950s and early 1960s, many new schools took up playing the sport, with sponsorship peaking in 1979 when 435 of the 506 IHSAA members fielded football teams.

In 1972, the state football playoffs were held for the first time. Initially 4 teams qualified in each of 4 classes, based on a point system. However, this arrangement left out some undefeated small school teams, and the playoffs were soon expanded to 8, and then 16, teams per class. The IHSAA passed a new rule in 1983 allowing schools to share sports with another school without consolidating. There were at least 38 schools that took advantage of this new rule for football in its first year and there are still several sharing agreements for football in place to this day. However, the quick decline in number of football teams due to both sharing arrangements and a wave of school consolidations that marked the late-1980s, led to significant disorder in scheduling for the remaining schools. To address this problem, the state instituted district play in 1992 for all but the largest class of schools, marking an end to conference play in small school football. Class 4A adopted districts in 2014, bringing an end to all official conference play in football.

6-man Football

Six man football (a variant that includes three backs, two ends, and a center) was first developed in 1934 in Nebraska, and quickly spread to Iowa, with as many as 140 schools playing the 6-man game at some point between 1934 and the late 1950s. By 1938, 6-man was popular enough in Iowa to warrant its own all-state selections in the Des Moines Register. However, numbers began to decline during the second world war and never fully recovered. By the late 1950s, 6-man football was on its way out, with some 6-man schools opting to go 8-man, others jumping all the way to 11-man, and many others closing or consolidating. The reason 8-man came to be preferred to 6-man is that 8-man more closely resembles traditional football, as in 6-man all players are eligible receivers and the quarterback (or player who receives the snap) is not allowed to run.

8-man football

In 1948, the 7-team Keomah Football Conference became the first in the state to sponsor 8-man football. It remained the only 8-man football conference in the state until 1953, when several schools in the southeastern corner of the state began playing 8-man football. This variant on the game grew quickly in the following years, with many 6-man schools switching to 8-man during the late 1950s. By the mid-1960s, however, 8-man football had also gone extinct. Then, in 1998, Walnut and Elk Horn-Kimballton who had previously been sharing football reached out to nearby Exira and several others schools around the state to ask if they wanted to try going 8-man. Three other schools (Charter Oak-Ute, Whiting, and Sentral of Fenton), agreed to join them, and 8-man football returned to Iowa for the first time in over 25 years. In 2000, several more schools joined the original six, and a state championship was established (albeit with only 4 teams qualifying for the playoffs). Some small schools were able to start football teams for the first time or end sharing agreements with others schools due to the 8-man option becoming available. Within a decade, 8-man became the de facto option for the state's smallest football schools, and today is the second largest classification of schools after class A.