The game they played: five ways of deciding a champion, and the Cavemen in each

1902–2026 — format evolution inside the team's own course

The frame: A school program does not choose the sport it plays; the state chooses it, repeatedly. AlmanacSports, the standing record of Indiana high school football's championship history, divides the whole course into five eras, and the Cavemen's life runs through all five. This article walks the eras as the team's own format history — what a season meant, and what winning one required, in each.

Era one — "Nothing official about it" (to 1926): No playoffs, no polls, no sanctioning champion: an undefeated season brought a claim, bolstered by the local newspaper, and rival claims stood side by side unreconciled. Mishawaka's 1920 team (7-0-2) holds exactly such a claim in AlmanacSports' table — and shares its year with Wabash's 8-0 claim, both printed, neither extinguished. The 1925 (8-0) and 1926 (8-0) claims stand in the same table; in 1926 three different schools were dubbed champions by various newspapers, Mishawaka among them. These are the program's three famous titles, and this history prints them as what they are — newspaper-era championships, honestly distinguished from IHSAA titles in the Sports leg's accounting, where the full treatment stands.

Era two — "The sportswriter says…" (1927–1952): From 1927 the Indianapolis Times' Dick Miller awarded a trophy with the IHSAA board's permission — explicitly not an official championship — and the polls and sportswriters' verdicts decided the rest. The Cavemen's peaks inside this era came on the field rather than in the voting: in 1930 Steele's undefeated team beat undefeated South Bend Central 6–0 at Notre Dame Stadium before 30,000 people, the largest crowd to that day for a high school game in that stadium, and took the Northern Indiana Conference East Division championship; and Russell Arndt's 1935 team was, in the Indiana Football Hall of Fame's words for Arndt, "named State Champions" — a naming, in the era's own mechanism, printed at exactly that strength. The conference course begins here and runs under everything after: the NIC was the weekly championship the program actually contested, and its droughts and titles mark the era buckets below.

Era three — "The Polls Rule" (1953–1972): Wire-service polls crowned the champion; there was still no game to win your way into. The Cavemen of this era are documented at yearbook strength — Coach Heck's 1962 team, ranked tenth in the state in the school yearbook's account, won the NIC's Eastern Division co-championship — and the era's defining Mishawaka fact is a drought: when Bill Doba's 1972 team won the conference title, it was, on the record carried in the Tribune's obituary of Doba, the program's first in twenty years, which dates the previous one to about 1952, the polls era's eve. The rivalry that now defines the program also begins in this era: the first Mishawaka–Penn game was played 5 November 1965 at Tupper Field and finished 0–0; the Backyard Brawl's whole series record stands in the Sports leg and is pointed to, not re-dug.

Era four — "Points & Clusters" (1973–1984): In 1973 the IHSAA finally staged a playoff, pushed by the Indiana Football Coaches Association under Commissioner Phil Eskew — and let almost nobody in: twelve schools in all, four per class across three classes, chosen by a points formula, with no neutral sites; one-loss and even undefeated teams stayed home. The field grew to 24 in 1976 and 48 in 1981; in 1983–84 a cluster system grouped every team in fours to sixes and advanced only the cluster winner, so a 4-6 team could advance while a 9-1 runner-up stayed home. The Cavemen's greatest tournament run came under the era's first, narrowest door: the 1974 team, 10–2 under Doba, reached the Class 3A final and lost to Indianapolis Washington 19–12 — a final reached when reaching one meant surviving a points cut that excluded most of the state. The classes themselves were part of the format the team played: three classes from 1973, a fourth added 1983.

Era five — "Let 'em all in!" (1985 to the present): From 1985 Indiana did what no other state does: every team enters the tournament, five classes deep (a sixth class, for the largest 32 schools, was added in 2013). The Cavemen's class line since then is enrollment arithmetic, not promotion or relegation, and John Harrell's log prints it season by season: in the seasons the log preserves in full it reads 5A in 1994–95, 4A in 2012, 5A again 2013–2016, 4A 2017–2018, 5A 2019–2023 and 4A 2024–2025. Inside this era the program's second finals run came in 2012 (Class 4A, lost to Indianapolis Cathedral 56–29), and its conference course changed houses: after the long NIC tenure — the 13-team, two-division NIC of 2015 had Mishawaka in its North division — the school moved to the Northern Lakes Conference at the start of 2020-21, a move that briefly paused the Penn series before a four-year contract restored it (2023 and 2025 at Penn, 2024 and 2026 at Mishawaka). The game the Cavemen play now is the all-in tournament, the NLC's round robin, and a rivalry game under contract — three formats their 1902 predecessors, playing a business college by arrangement, would not recognize, in a sport that still ends its autumn on the same 1926 ground.

Sources:

1. AlmanacSports, Indiana high school football state champions history (almanacsports.com) — the five eras and their mechanisms; the 1920, 1925 and 1926 Mishawaka claims with co-claims printed; the 1973/1976/1981/1983–84/1985/2013 format changes.
2. Indiana Football Hall of Fame, inductee records for Frank M. Steele and Russell H. Arndt (ifca-hof.org) — the 1930 Notre Dame Stadium game and NIC East title; the 1935 team "named State Champions."
3. Miskodeed 1963 (Internet Archive full text) — the 1962 team's state ranking and Eastern Division co-championship.
4. South Bend Tribune, Bill Doba obituary, 1 September 2026 — the 1972 conference title as the first in twenty years.
5. John Harrell's Indiana high school football, Mishawaka season log (indianahsfootball.homestead.com) — the per-season class line, 1994–2025.
6. ND Insider, August 2023 — the NIC-to-NLC move at the start of 2020-21 and the restored Penn contract.
7. Noblesville Times, October 2022, and the Indianapolis Business Journal (Lopresti, 2016) — the 1973 points system, the cluster years and the all-in tournament's uniqueness, corroborating AlmanacSports.