HONORABLE MENTIONAlaskaNorthern Lights - Also known as the aurora borealis, it's a light show that occurs when charged particles meet atoms in the high altitudes (longitude-wise). Located in mostly southern Alaska, but there is another Northern Lights in Michigan, on the northern peninsula.
Golden Heart - Fairbanks is the Golden Heart City. Most teams are located in the state's interior, where Fairbanks is the major city.
CaliforniaMother Lode - Teams in this Sac-Joaquin Section league in the Sierra Nevada foothills are located along the belt of land that produces massive amounts of gold, the focal point of the Gold Rush that helped build the state.
Golden Empire - Similar to the Mother Lode, the Golden Empire is another Sac-Joaquin Section league. It's title banners feature a miner panning for gold.
San Andreas - This Southern Section league is a likely reference to the world-famous San Andreas Fault, where many an earthquake has developed.
Monticello Empire - This Sac-Joaquin Section league is located south of the Monticello Dam, which holds back Lake Berryessa, one of the state's largest man-made lakes. The town of Monticello was covered by the new lake.
Citrus Belt - Those sunny Southern California days produce oranges, lemons, limes and more. These schools located east of Los Angeles are right in the thick of it.
Agape - Agape is defined as a love that is qualified as spiritual, and this league of Southern Section teams from the high desert east of Los Angeles are all parochial schools.
Majestic - Grand or lofty, according to the dictionary. A well-worded way to show superiority with a league name.
Sunshine - Just like the Citrus Belt, it's all about the sunshine in SoCal.
DelawareBlue Hen - The Blue Hen is the state bird in Delaware and the name also lent itself to Delaware soldiers in the Revolutionary War.
Hawaii
Big Island - The island of Hawaii (technically Hawai'i) is known more commonly as the "Big Island" to locals and tourists alike.
IdahoLong Pin - Not much online to discern why they chose this name. Let us know!
Sawtooth Central - This one is named after the Sawtooth Range, a set of peaks within the Rocky Mountains that look like the teeth of a saw when you see a panoramic view.
IllinoisBig Shoulders - Lots of Illinois-based businesses and organizations use the Big Shoulders phrase, and it goes back to a poem titled "Chicago" by Carl Sandburg.
Egyptian Illini - The bottom third of Illinois is referred to as Little Egypt, fertile like the Nile Delta in Africa. And the Illini were the tribes living in the upper Mississippi Valley when settlers started appearing in the area.
Indiana
Leagues with Hoosier in them - The demonym for someone from Indiana is "Hoosier," and there are seven leagues that feature the term: Hoosier, Hoosier Crossroads, Hoosier Heartland, Hoosier Heritage, Hoosier Hills, Mid-Hoosier and Northeast Hoosier.
Duneland - Sand dunes line the shore of Lake Michigan on the northern edge of the state, and there is a national seashore to go along with a state park.
Pocket - Evansville, located on the southwestern tip of the state, is nicknamed the Pocket City because of its position on a bend in the Ohio River. Schools in the league are situated around southwestern Indiana, which in itself is a pocket of the state.
Iowa
Pride of Iowa - Some leagues say they are the best with an adjective. This one just comes right out and says that the whole state is proud of it.
KansasHeart of America - Kansas City claims that it is the Heart of America, and Kansas as a state is also worthy of the title. The league isn't exactly in the Kansas City area, but close enough.
Heart of the Plains - This one is pretty much the same as above, though on a smaller scale. They have a covered wagon and a sunflower in the league logo, a huge plus. Anyone who has driven through Kansas knows the plains stretch for hours, maybe even days. Being the Heart of the Plains is a big deal.
Mid-Continent - Well, not quite. The geographic center of North America is commonly known to be Rugby, S.D. Still, Kansas is pretty close.
Wheat State - Yes it is called the Sunflower State. It also is called the Wheat State, though. Wheat isn't the most exciting thing, but you have to admit it makes for a neat league name.
MassachusettsMayflower - The Mayflower ship left Spain in 1620 to bring colonists to North America and landed at Plymouth Rock.
MichiganGreater Thumb - They're not saying their thumb is better than yours. Hold your left hand with the knuckles facing you, and you will see the shape of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Your thumb is where the Greater Thumb Conference exists.
Copper Country - Michigan's Upper Peninsula holds an area that at one point was the world's biggest copper producer. Those days have passed, but teams in the league still pay tribute to the area's history.
MinnesotaGreat Polar - Minnesota is way up there latitude-wise, and you can
click here to see the history of the Great Polar League, which was also the Polar Bear Conference and Little Seven in the past.
Southern Confederacy - This one is a total mind trick. Southern Confederacy usually elicits memories of how the south tried to secede from the north and then America fell into the Civil War. References to the Confederate States of America are hard to find this far north. But all the schools are located in the southern part of the state, so there's your reason.
Here is a site with helmets of the football teams.
7 Star - This one doesn't have an easy explanation. Minnesota is the "North Star State" because it is the farthest north of the contiguous states. The newspaper in Minneapolis is the Star Tribune. The pro hockey team in previous decades was the North Stars. Perhaps it was seven teams and they wanted to play off the North Star theme.
Missouri
Mark Twain - One of the greatest (perhaps the greatest) American novelists was born in Florida, Mo., before moving to Hannibal, Mo., later in his childhood. This league name pays tribute to an American (and local) icon, though the schools in this league are located around Springfield in the south-central part of the state and Twain grew up more in the northeastern part.
ABC - No clue on this one. The basics of anything are the "ABC's" of it, so perhaps this is one of the state's most basic leagues.
New Jersey
Mid-State 38 - For rhyming reasons, it was a good thing a team left after the 2011 football season, because it used to be the Mid-State 39. This is a football-only league,
and according to NJ.com it is made up of teams from Hunterdon, Somerset, Union and Warren counties.
New York
Finger Lakes - Eleven fingers? Whoa. That's more than two hands worth. In western New York, there are 11 lakes that are very long but also very narrow, and they are collectively called the Finger Lakes. The Finger Lakes League has an east and a west division, and is part of Section V in New York.
Patroon - Go way back for the origin of this one. Before the United States of America was formed, Dutch colonists in New Netherland (now upstate New York) who owned large tracts of land were called Patroons.
North CarolinaMega 7 - They could call this one the 7 million conference. Mega is a Greek prefix that means million and also is used in current lexicon to describe something large or massive.
Tarheel - North Carolina is the "Tar Heel" state and a resident of the state can be called a tarheel. Legend has it that the name came up because the state exported tar from its pine forests in its younger days.
Tar-Roanoke - This is the combination of two rivers that are prominent in the northeastern parts of the state.
OhioPremier - The Premier Conference's name puts it ahead of all the others in Ohio. Premier means the first in status or importance. This Cleveland-area league might have some big names, but No. 1 in Ohio?
All-American - As an individual, earning All-American honors is the pinnacle. As a conference, it must also be the pinnacle of greatness.
Firelands - When British forces burned whole villages in Connecticut in 1779 and 1781, land was granted to residents of those areas, and it happened to be in present-day Ohio. More specifically, the northern areas of the state.
Oklahoma
66 - The 66 Conference has to be named for historic U.S. Highway 66, since no other explanations have been presented. Schools currently in the conference aren't all on the former route, but a large majority are pretty close to the famous route.
89er - An 89er is a term used to describe those who participated in the Land Run of 1889, when the United States government opened 2 million acres of land to settlers. It was first-come, first-served, and an estimated 50,000 people tried to grab their own little plots of land in the north-central part of the state.
Cottonbelt - The Cotton Belt (known under its two-word name) is predominantly centered in the South, but it does creep into southeastern Oklahoma. It's the part of the country where the soils and climate are best for growing cotton.
Super Seven - Love the alliteration, and we love the "super" adjective.
NOAA - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has its National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman. Perhaps that is the inspiration.
Will Rogers - He's "Oklahoma's favorite son" and was one of the nation's top stars in the 1920s and 30s. Rogers was an American cowboy and did vaudeville, commentary, humor and motion pictures.
Panhandle 6 - Oklahoma has the most famous panhandle in the nation, though Florida has a claim to it. Regardless, a good league name referencing that narrow strip of land on the state's northwest side.
Oregon
Big Sky - Montana may be know as "Big Sky Country" but eastern Oregon also has its own expanses of high-elevation flat land, which make the sky look quite large.
Lewis & Clark - Captain Meriweather Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark left St. Louis to explore the newly acquired western part of the United States (and unclaimed territory) and they finally found the Pacific Ocean after following the Columbia River, which represents Oregon's north border.
Pennsylvania
Anthracite - The Anthracite League pays tribute to a natural material that grows in the hills of mid-eastern Pennsylvania. The Schuylkill River area was the first in America to extract and use anthracite, a hard coal that burns cleaner than bituminous coal. It costs a lot more than coal, though.
South DakotaBig Sioux - Most of the schools in this league are located near the Big Sioux River. Putting the word "Big" in front of any name makes a league name cooler, like the Big East or Big Ten. Although we know this is more of a geographical name.
Yellowstone Trail - The Yellowstone Trail was the first transcontinental roadway, and originated in the northern parts of South Dakota. Roughly you could say it followed the path of U.S. Highway 12 in South Dakota.
All Nations - Teams in this league are located on the Rosebud, Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River and Crow Creek indian reservations.
Virginia
Bull Run - There were two battles named "Bull Run" in the American Civil War.
Northern Neck - Virginians call peninsulas necks, and the Northern Neck is the most northerly of the three major necks on the Atlantic coast.
Lonesome Pine - "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" is a literary classic written by John Fox Jr., and it takes place near the Virginia/Kentucky border, and that's where teams from this league reside.
Battlefield - More Civil War references here. Though you could metaphorically say that every league in the nation is a battlefield.
Washington
Caribou Trail - The Caribou Trail stretches from south to north along the eastern portion of the state, which is much less mountainous that the west and center. Fur traders and miners used the trail, which is named after an animal that doesn't live in Washington, but did reach southern British Columbia, Canada, where the trail ends.
West Virginia
Coalfield - Depending on whose stats you look at, West Virgina is either the No. 3 or No. 2 coal-producing state in the nation. A coal field is just what it sounds like, an underground field of coal.
Mountain State - It's the official nickname of the state.
Wisconsin
Dairyland - Wisconsin is No. 2 in the nation in terms of milk production via dairies. And cheese? Well, we all know Wisconsin is famous for that.
Packerland - The Green Bay Packers were named after the Indian Packing Company, the team's first sponsor. The company specialized in packing canned meat. The eastern part of Wisconsin dominates the industry in the state.
Cloverbelt - There are lots of dairies and pastures in Wisconsin, and clovers provide excellent nutrition for cows. Therefore you could say Wisconsin is part of the "Clover Belt" just like Oklahoma is part of the Cotton Belt.
Flyway - Birds the make their migratory trip twice a year and do so over Wisconsin, sometimes stopping in the state for some temporary time.
