Tiger Football Schedules Have Stretched Far and Wide

 In 1932 legendary Massillon Head Coach Dave Stewart loaded his team onto a train and traveled over 300 miles to the center of Pennsylvania to face Harrisburg in a high school football game.  It was the first time that the Tigers had ever played a team that was not from the state of Ohio.  And it would not be the last.

Since that first match and over a span of some 93 years Massillon has played 51 different non-Ohio teams.  But it wasn’t necessarily by choice.  Throughout most of the Tigers’ 130-year history they have been classified as an independent team; i.e., not a member of an organized league.  That poses an immediate problem in terms of the ability to schedule Ohio teams.

With nearly the rest of the teams in the state residing in a various conferences, most are committed to playing league games in Weeks 4 through 9.  That leaves just the first three weeks of the season as the only slots available to schedule Ohio opponents, except for the annual Week 10 match against rival Canton McKinley.

The second issue is that for the past ten years Massillon has developed into a formidable program that most potential foes, particularly public schools, would much rather avoid.  Except of course for the inner-city teams that are more than willing to come in for a pay day.

One of the few respites was from 1963 through 1979 when the Tigers were members of the legacy All-American Conference.  During that time they faced just one out-of-state opponent, Altoona, Pennsylvania, in a 5-game series.

Regardless, Massillon has always scheduled non-Ohio teams from time to time.  In fact, including that initial match in 1932, Massillon has played 60 non-Ohio teams.  From 1936 through 1942, covering the latter years of legendary Coach Paul Brown and for a couple years thereafter, the Tigers played 16 of these foreign entities.  But mostly, it’s been just one game in a given year.

But that all changed in 2015 when Nate Moore became the head coach.  With his program firmly in place following three years of growing pains, it was time to take the next step.  It started with a game against nationally-ranked East St. Louis.  In one of the more exciting contests ever played at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium, Massillon outlasted the Missouri team by the score of 46-40.  The win kick-started the Tiger program into national prominence, leading to back-to-back undefeated regular seasons and three consecutive trips to the playoff state finals.  Then in 2023, they captured the title to cap off yet another unbeaten season, while enjoying multiple Top-25 national rankings.

But, throughout that time scheduling has become an even more dire issue, as the only teams in Ohio willing to schedule have been a few long-time rivals and the major parochial schools.  So, Coach Moore has annually been forced to search the entire country to fill the slate.  In fact, his teams over the past eight years have played 22 games against non-Ohio teams.  Fortunately, they have also enjoyed success against them with a 17-5 mark.  While some have been moderately good, several others own national rankings, including the following:

• East St. Louis, MO
• Valdosta, GA
• Bergen Catholic, NJ
• DeMatha Catholic, MD
• Rabun Gap-Nacoochee, GA
• Football North, ONT

For the record the Tigers have historically played 82 non-Ohio games against 51 different teams from 20 different states, plus Canada and the United Kingdom, while producing a win-loss mark of 69-13.  The most common state is Pennsylvania, involving 22 games with 12 teams, with a record of 19-3.  Within that state, the most common opponent was Altoona.  The two teams matched up for five games in a series that began in 1964 and then another 2-game series in 1987 and ’88.

Massillon fans have seen four different teams from Indiana, highlighted by North Central, from Indianapolis.  The two faced off in five consecutive games, with Central winning the one played in the Hoosier Dome.

On the lighter side was the game against NFL Academy-London, which was played in Oregon, and the ten games against five different teams from Ontario, Canada.  But not so light was sports academy Football North, with which the two teams split a pair of matches.

Below is a map depicting the different states involved in these games.