We had St. Thomas Aquinas fifth on Monday while MaxPreps, USA Today and High School Football America all had the Raiders first. We wrote on Friday morning that if Aquinas handled Columbus, fifth was too low and we would say so.
Aquinas did not handle Columbus. Aquinas beat Columbus 31-24 and had to hang on to do it.
So we are saying the other thing instead, and we are saying it without much satisfaction, because the number that came out of Friday night is not really about the team that won.
The Raiders were 17 points up and could not put it away
Aquinas led 17-7 at the half. It took the second-half kickoff and scored on the opening drive, a Tyler Reid touchdown run of 80 yards with 11:09 left in the third, per the live file from High School On SI. That made it 24-7 and that was the high-water mark of the evening.
From there to the horn, Columbus outscored Aquinas 17-7.
We are not going to walk you through the scoring plays that got Columbus there, because nobody has published a full sequence yet and we are not going to build one out of a scoreboard graphic. What is on the record from more than one newsroom is the shape: a 17-point Aquinas lead in the third, a 31-24 final, and a Columbus team on the field at the end with the ball mattering.
The USA Today Network's own headline called it an escape.
Columbus is the story and it is not close
Here is the number that ought to move somebody.
These two have played three years running. Aquinas won 42-6. Then Aquinas won 42-7. On Friday, Aquinas won 31-24.
A 36-point game became a 35-point game became a seven-point game. That is not a bad night for a great team. That is a program arriving.
And Columbus did not arrive on Friday. Columbus arrived the night it beat Bishop Gorman 33-28, a game it led 20-0 and 33-15. We wrote on Friday that the final score flattered Gorman. We will now write that the final score in Fort Lauderdale flatters nobody. Columbus has now played the No. 10 team in the country and the No. 5 team in the country, and it is coming out of that pair with one win and a seven-point loss on the road.
The Explorers' five-star safety A'mir Sears, who caught two touchdowns and intercepted three passes against Gorman, had a quiet night by the account of the one outlet that filed on him. Columbus got to within seven anyway. Read that however you want. We read it as depth.
What Friday actually settled
It settled that Aquinas is very good and that nothing happened in Fort Lauderdale to argue the four teams we kept above them down a spot.
It did not settle whether Aquinas is the best team in America. A seven-point home win over a team that lost by 36 two years ago is a resume line that reads differently depending on what you already believed. If you had the Raiders first, Friday is a win over a top-ten opponent and you keep them first. If you had them fifth, Friday is a team that led by 17 and finished by seven and you have your reason.
We had them fifth. We are not going to pretend Friday changed that, and we are not going to pretend it vindicated us either. The Raiders won the game. That counts for more than the margin does, and it counts for less than a poll position does.
Boards come Monday. Everything above is Friday night, not a ranking.
What we could not confirm
Both records. One publisher has Aquinas at 4-0 and Columbus at 3-1 after this game; the schedule pages that fed our Friday preview had both teams 2-0 going in. Those cannot both be right, so neither one prints here.
The full scoring sequence, for the reason above. The attendance. Any quote from either sideline. When those land, this piece gets an update and the update gets a line saying what changed.
That is the whole night in Fort Lauderdale. Somebody's number is wrong this morning, ours or theirs, and Friday moved that argument about four inches.
