Central Catholic of Modesto (left) capped undefeated season in 2015 by winning fourth straight CIF state title. A right, Michael Hutchings (later named Mr. Football State Player of Year) celebrates with teammates after De La Salle won 2012 Open Division state title & capped 15-0 season. Spartans have state record 22 undefeated seasons. Photos: Mark Tennis & Scott Kurtz.
Thanks to mountains of information on California high school football that can’t be found anywhere else, here is an honor roll list according to Cal-Hi Sports of every reported unbeaten team from schools currently in the CIF Northern Section, CIF Sac-Joaquin Section, CIF North Coast Section, CIF Central Coast Section plus San Francisco and Oakland. The only teams for the 2023 season to be added to the list are Woodland Christian 15-0 from the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section and Colusa 14-0 for the CIF Northern Section.
For companion post of All-Time SoCal Unbeaten Football Teams (Gold Club), CLICK HERE.
This is a post for Gold Club members only on CalHiSports.com. Football state record updates through the fall 2023 season are done. Weekly state rankings and some of part of our all-state teams also will be for Gold Club members only. You can sign up today to get all of our Gold Club content for just $3.99 for one month. For details, CLICK HERE.
Any historical feature like this for California high school football would not be possible without the work of late, legendary San Pedro and Rio Vista-based sports researcher Bruce McIntosh. Bruce, who died in December of 2017 at age 87, traded information for more than 40 years with Cal-Hi Sports founder Nelson Tennis (1936-2004). While Nelson specialized mostly in state records, Bruce did a lot his work for all-time school-by-school records, especially in football. His index card collection of football scores and affiliated binders that summarized a lot of that information is now part of the Cal-Hi Sports historical archives.
We were able to get Bruce McIntosh out to a game in 2012 in Vacaville. Photo: Mark Tennis.
After compiling this list to include every unbeaten football team in state history, we decided to break it up into separate Northern California and Southern California posts. Usually, we include the CIF Central Section as part of the north, but there are a higher number of unbeaten teams from the north than the south. Many of the NorCal teams just didn’t have section playoffs to be in for many years while the CIF Southern Section and L.A. City Section have had playoffs for many, many more years. That simply means that a lot of top CIFSS and L.A. City teams that were unbeaten for the regular season suffered playoff losses. For these lists, the CIF Central Section has been included in the south. For closed schools, we tried to keep those in the sections they were in, but may have missed some of them. For schools that have moved to a different section, those are listed in the sections in which they are current members. All schools are listed alphabetically, so a school with an unbeaten team that you don’t see may have been listed for another section.
