All Time Decades of Dominance

Over the past month, Tom Sikorski and I have researched which prep football teams in Illinois have dominated during a specific decade. Starting back to 1900, we have a found that a select few have won 80% or more of their games during a period that started when a decade began (years ending in zero or “0”) through its end (years ending in nine or “9”).

As you will see, not many schools were fortunate to play up to 75 games in a decade and win 80% or more prior to 1920, which is considered to be the time when schools actually got control of their programs and providing help with schedules and equipment, so we allowed a few schools prior to 1920 to be on the list if they played at least 50 games.

We would also like to give credit to former Chicago prep sportswriter Taylor Bell, who put out a list similar to this in 2012, while working with NBC Sportschannel in Chicago at the time. We’ve taken his original list (of about 25-35 schools) and expanded on it to show the number of schools in the state to accomplish this rare feat.

This spreadsheet shows not only the schools in order of their winning percentages, but there is also a tab for each decade, along with another tab that shows which schools have won 100 or more games in a given decade.

Please note that a tie is counted as a half-win and a half-loss in these percentages, which are TRUE calculations (not rounded up).

If you use this list, please credit Tom and myself as well as noting that Taylor provided the original list in 2012.

Thanks!

Tom Sikorski and Kev Varney