Pine-Richland High School's football team, from suburban Pittsburgh, won the 5A state championship in 2020 for the second time in recent years. Pennsylvania's high school football classifications go from 1A to 6A, with 6A schools having the largest number of students, so you can see that Pine-Richland is a large school district. The Rams smashed Cathedral Prep 48-7 in the state championship game. High school football in Pennsylvania is as popular as anywhere in the country outside of the Deep South, Florida and Texas. The team is entirely White except for two Blacks.
The team is coached by Eric Kasperowicz, who was a prominent high school QB and LB and went on to play at the University of Pittsburgh as a safety and linebacker and had some NFL tryouts but never got a chance to play as a pro. Pine-Richland is 85-18 since Kasperowicz became coach.
A local free paper had an article I noticed titled "4 from P-R Football Team Accept Walk-on Offers." P-R is short for Pine-Richland. The four walk-ons joined three players who did get offers, but hardly to college powerhouses -- Charlotte, Kent State and Liberty. The kid who got the offer from Charlotte is one of the two black kids on the team.
The four walk-ons were two wide receivers, a running back, and a cornerback. One of the WRs, Eli Jochem, broke Neil Walker's school records for career catches, receiving yards, and his single season TD record with 18. Neil Walker is the long-time MLB second baseman who played his first six seasons with the hometown Pirates.
Jochem is walking on at Indiana, and the comments from his teammate in the article is telling: "The sentiment from Jochem's teammates is that he's vastly underrated and will prove that he will shine at a Power 5 school. '
I don't know how he slipped through the cracks,' said [Charlie] Mill the other WR walk-on. 'Seeing his success is so awesome. We worked out every day during the summer.
I see him vertical jumping 60 inches'."
So here you have a football powerhouse in a prominent state for high school football, and its stars, especially at the verboten skill positions, are completely ignored by recruiters or forced to go to programs where they will get close to zero chance to move on to the NFL even if they excel.