1976 Moeller: Perhaps the Greatest HS Football Team Ever. Gerry Faust Accepts the First Hall of Fame Award

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https://www.pbs.org/video/43rd-annual-buddy-larosa-high-school-sports-hall-of-fame-tfpcgg/

This is incredible:  from 2018 this is the actual broadcast of the 43rd annual Cincinnati LaRosa’s High School Hall of Fame awards.  At the 24:23 mark the presentation is made for “the inaugural award” for a hs football team.  1976 Moeller.  This includes the acceptance of the award by Gerry Faust who is one of the best hs football coaches ever (he went straight from Moeller to take over as head coach of Notre Dame.). His speech has a powerful finish worth listening for.

Note this is the inaugural award.  Note that Moeller slaughtered the two teams in the finals of the Ohio state championship (48-0 and 43-5) and also won their first mythical national championship.  Faust won four of these in six years and 106 out of 108 games in one run.  The ‘76 Moeller team had 26 players receive college football scholarships.  Counting 10th and 11th graders on that team over 65 players on it eventually received scholarships. It outscored opponents 490-40 in 12 games.

Many have called this the best Ohio hs football team ever.  Some have said that for its time it was the equal of any team anywhere ever.

An incredible video.  Enjoy!

[Sammyswordsman]

What happened to all the great HS football players from Ohio?  That state provided All American stock for Penn St., Ohio St., Notre Dame etc.

[BUFORDGAWOLVES]

4 hours ago, Sammyswordsman said:

What happened to all the great HS football players from Ohio?  That state provided All American stock for Penn St., Ohio St., Notre Dame etc.

Transferred out to SJB and MD?

BGW

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Moeller in the late ‘70’s through at least ‘80 played their home games at the University of Cincinnati.  I saw DeMatha play Moeller in 1980 (Faust’s last year before Notre Dame) and there were over 20,000 reported in attendance.  In fact the Cincinnati Enquirer had Moeller as the headline of their sports section the next day.

I saw the game with a friend of mine who had played for Faust ten + years earlier (former Speaker of the House John Boehner was a LB for Faust in ‘68.) and I thought the ‘80 team was extraordinary-they beat a very good DeMatha team 34-0.  He told me that team was good (they won a mythical national championship) but everyone considered ‘76 as the benchmark.  Note that the LaRosa Hall Of Fame chose ‘76 for their “inaugural award.”