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130 Years of Oil City and Franklin football

Both Oil City and Franklin will be playing their 130th season of high school football in 2026. Their rivalry, which also began in 1896, is one of the oldest in Pennsylvania -- not the oldest, but it's right up there.

Since both schools have had their ups and plenty of downs on the gridiron over the years, neither has reached 500 wins. Oil City, thanks to its surge since 1994, is getting close with 489 victories (by my count, which means unofficially). Franklin, thanks to its dominance from 1959-92, isn't as close with 449 wins after a miserable last 35 years or so.

The accompanying chart of selected schools is from easternPafootball.com.

I included Mount Carmel, since it is No. 1 in the state, Aliquippa since the Oilers faced the Quips in the playoffs last season, and Southern Columbia because it's the gold standard in the state at the moment. (I was surprised that the team has existed only since 1963.)

I included every District 10 team, I think, except for Sharpsville and Farrell since neither the Knights nor the Oilers play them hardly ever.

Neither school on list of 500 wins,
but Oilers close with unofficial 489;
Knights have notched 449 victories

Anyway, y'all know Farrell is good.

DuBois and Punxsutawney are on this list. DuBois used to be in the same region as Oil City and Franklin and the Oilers played Punxsy in the state playoffs last season. Also in there is Bradford, an old on-again, off-again rival of both schools.

And Redbank -- the Bulldogs are coached by FHS grad Blane Gold, and his teams have contributed greatly to the Bulldogs' record.

Also surprising, at least to me, is General McLane. I didn't realize the Lancers have been around as long as they have -- 1916.

I'm also surprised Fairview is right up there.

How did I come by this list? Well, it hit me that Oil City and Franklin are in a round-number year of existence. And I knew the rivalry was an old one state-wise -- not the oldest, but, again, right up there.

UPDATE -- I did find Titusville via Google. It was on that easternPafootball site. Titusville's record is only 10 games better than Oil City's -- all in the loss column. Records for Oil City and Franklin were close to what I have. They have 489-564-49 for the Oilers and 448-578-45 for the Knights. A big difference is the first year for both. They have 1898 for Oil City and 1897 for Franklin. But I KNOW Franklin and Oil City first met in 1896.

Franklin News Page 1 placement (yellow) of first Oil City-Franklin game on Oct. 31, 1896. Easy to miss with that headline. Couldn't find anything on newspapers.com from the Derrick or the Blizzard. Actually, the web site didn't have all the Oil City papers from that year.

So I was looking for some art -- that's newspaper talk for photos -- to go with this feature, but didn't find anything from 1896 for Franklin or Oil City. I did come across this story in The Derrick on women's fashion in 1896. (No football though and can't imagine these chicks going to the game.) Later, I was googling around and found an 1896 photo of John Heisman at Auburn. Heisman was born in Cleveland but grew up in Titusville and was an 1887 THS grad. The earliest photo I have of either local school is the 1906 Oilers. The "H," by the way, stands for "high" as in high school. -- Penny Weichel

The guy on the far right in the back row? That's Percy Langster, the first black to star in sports for the Oilers. He took a lot of guff for his skin color, though. Very often opposing players were out to get him, and once he was kicked in the head and knocked out of the game. But Langster also took up boxing and developed a pretty good uppercut. Opposing players shied away after that. Langster went on to become a lawyer in Detroit.

Also on that team: J. Henry Quirk and Fred Ande (Penn State), Harry Nunn (Colgate), Tom McIntosh (Carnegie Tech) and Jim Burton (Lehigh). Ande, who became an oil man in Reno, was still wearing his football sweater when he went skating in 1946. Dan Skelly became Venango County DA...

Thanksgiving Day games eventually became a big annual event -- "must-see TV," so to speak. This newspaper cartoon is from 1931 -- 35 years they had been playing by that time..

The second game on Nov. 14, 1896, also "made" Page 1.