HS football quality.

Hard question to answer for most of us, as I doubt most of us have first hand knowledge, or at least enough objective knowledge, of what is happening in various states.

Obviously, as BLB pointed to, states with larger populations, warm weather climates, and a football culture (to pull the top talent) will most likely produce more top teams and leagues. If you are just looking at it that way, which states have the highest peaks, then CA, TX, FL are most likely the answer. But even within a given state, heck even within a given county or region quality can vary wildly. We literally played a team who was 50+ on Calpreps and team who was -30, within a couple weeks.

That being written, I think calpreps does a good job of OBJECTIVELY ranking all teams, if you go there they may give you your answer

By default the opinion will only be SUBJECTIVE.  
Next, what is the "highest quality of HS football"?   Duncanville (school in Largest Class in Texas) has 4,500 students according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.  That is more than double the largest HS in Louisiana.  Miami Central has about 1,300 students.  I am betting you can cobble together a much lower floor with 4,500 than 1,300.  Sure the ceilings are going to be dependent on Studs, but the floor is not.   Does that factor into the equation? 

As coachd5085 said, “By default the opinion will only be SUBJECTIVE.”

I can only talk about the Midwest, but I have been in several states. I’ve been in North Dakota for the last 12… I was impressed at the quality of football when I came here. Coaching, players, level of play were much like the other states where I coached.

Since ND has a state population which is roughly 1/10 of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area, it is tough to compare… but per capita, I would say ND could hold its own… and I really believe that the argument could be made for any state’s level of football coaching and playing.

Now as Defcord and realdawg have pointed out, when you define “highest quality” as financial investment, facilities, etc. what I have seen (based on the strip of land from Canada to Mexico in the central time zone/mountain time zone), generally speaking, the further south you go, the “higher quality of football”.

I get paid pretty well because teacher salaries are good here. Our coaching stipend is good (for our state… but it is less than half compared to a job I looked at a few weeks ago in a more southern state).

Our facilities (in my estimation) are terrible. We have a weight room circa 1975, fair locker rooms (and fair because of all the work we did renovating), no storage space and a tiny coaches office (one office). Our field is nice (it’s in a park), but people in Nebraska on south would be embarrassed of the facilities here… but we are about in the middle of the pack in our region/conference  (I already mentioned the oilfield towns in another thread… we’re about 50 miles outside of that so we didn’t get diddly).

I shared a lot in the “Winning FB Program's Value to School & Community” thread that I am not going to rehash… but (for example) I know one program several states south of us that generates more excitement than we do every year. In the last 11 years, we haven’t really been close to a losing record - they haven’t been close to a winning record, but high school football is perceived (often by myself) as “higher quality” there because it is more important to that region of the country.

Trinity League in Orange County of Southern California. Top two teams in the nation and 4 of the top 100. 

If you want to watch/learn from a program that can help you learn/grow, then I don't think it matters which state the HS program is from.  Other than level of competition maybe, there are great programs all around. I can point you to numerous great programs in SC, and I can also point you to numerous ones to avoid.  I can do the same with GA and NC.

'THE HIGHEST QULITY OF FOOTBALL GAMES' is a very vague quantifier.  I could give you a Friday night and where to show up that would give you all that and nobody on the field will ever play the game past their 12th grade year.

I would venture that you are looking for a who rather than a where.

I may be wrong.

Do you want to "learn HS football" to help you coach at this level?

There is good football played in a lot of states. I once got into a discussion with a D1 college coach about what states in the midwest (since that is where I live) had the best ball. He thought it would be something like this based on his experiences recruiting.

Ohio/Michigan/Illinois/Missouri

Wisconsin/Indiana/Minnesota

Iowa/Nebraska/ND/SD

blb is correct. I am from Czech Republic. I take break from coaching after 10 years and I will doing only my job (coaching football was never my job).

And I would like watch some quality HS football during this time. IMO no team from our highest adult level can compare with top50 maybe 100 HS in U.S. Many HS coaches have to handled similar conditions like europen team. E.g. rosters 35-60 players in same level, different level of facilities number of coaches, averege athletics talebt, football skill, football IQ and etc. A lot of similarities.

ok, more specific. If I am compare play-off brackets at highest level in eg. Texas (6A) vs Idaho (5A) then which play-off will have better quility. Simply highest level vs highest level.

Is it clear?

Although, I clicked on this link thinking we were rating footballs..................

I think Washington has underrated football. The biggest schools are smaller than the biggest schools in some of the major states (largest classification floor is around 1600 students) and yet it produces much higher quality football than Oregon and Idaho. It's top teams have generally fared pretty well in limited national exposure. Graham Kapowsin beat Collins Hill of GA in 2021, ranked no 7 at the time. Obviously Bellevue had a run there.

Recently, one of the top teams in Oregon's largest classification every year (Hermiston) actually switched to join the Washington association, and it has struggled to compete since. Some of that is the normal ebb and flow of athletes, but it is clear that the quality of competition is different.

Like it's in the middle of the Great Recession, Pregnant Wife, 16 month old kid... And they fire you and your wife.... 

My brother lives in Arizona and the div.1 players in the Pheonix, Tempe, Mesa, etc. areas is impressive.

Even in those leagues though, there is a wide disparity. Right now in the Catholic League there's De La Salle, and then there's everyone else. I'm interested to see what Detroit Catholic Central looks like under some new direction, and OLSM, traditionally a power looks like they're starting to catch their stride finally after moving from the wishbone stuff they did forever to the air raid.

PHSL has King and Cass, and then everybody else is pretty bad. I'm sure they have a prospect or two, but it isn't great football.

OAA has a lot of prospects as does the MAC Red. Some very good leagues in this part of the state.

I do think Michigan in general is pretty good in the midwest though. Not Ohio good, but there's some good ball happening here.

Great commentary on needing to be able to separate the strength of larger cities from the state's overall.

Top tier in several states are more or less the same.

If you took the middle 50% of every state, TX and GA would outclass the rest. For a lot of reasons the depth of those two states is unmatched.