Michigan High School Football Site Is A Stats Nerd's Dream
Michigan's high school football season is well under way, and while the prep stars of today dream of future glory, there's a Web site with a complete history of prep seasons past.
That site is michigan-football.com. And it has a complete, exhaustive history of every high school football game played in Michigan since 1950. Each of more than 600 high school teams' histories are sorted by conference, by county and by high school. There's also a list of the best and worst high school teams all-time in Michigan dating back to 1950.
The site doesn't stop there. It also contains historical results since 1945 for all NCAA divisions, from the major powers to smaller schools in NCAA Divisons II and III. There are also historical results for NAIA teams, the AFL, the Canadian Football League and more.
The site has been a labor of love since 1995 for John Hulsebus, who played his high school football at East Kentwood in the Grand Rapids area, and now lives in Plainwell, just north of Kalamazoo.
"I started it back in 1995 when I wanted a means to learn HTML and develop a Web site," Hulsebus said. "Being a former high school football player and one who kept hard-copy stats, creating a site on high school football seemed like a good place to start."
The site initially covered teams only in the Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo areas, Hulsebus said, "and I eventually planned on dropping the site after my experimentation in Web programming was done. But then I started getting emails from folks about the site and it took off to first cover the entire state and then everntually providing game-by-game results."
Today's michigan-football.com covers teams from New Buffalo in the far southwest to Monroe in the far southeast to Ontonagon in the far western Upper Peninsula.
Hulsebus said much of the site's updating is automated, and it requires only an hour or two a week to maintain.
So, before you head out for a little Friday Night Lights, check in with www.michigan-football.com.
