The First Academy is 4-0. IMG Academy is 3-0. Neither has lost a game, and 65 places separate them on our board.
IMG Academy of Bradenton, our third, plays at The First Academy of Orlando on Friday at 7:00 PM Eastern, at the Payne Stewart Athletic Complex. That is the Florida Game of the Week.
The extra win belongs to the lower ranked team
This is the clearest case on the whole board for why we rank the way we do. A record tells you how many times a team walked off happy. It does not tell you who was standing across from it.
The First Academy has four wins to IMG's three and sits 65 places below it. That is not an oversight and it is not a slight. It is the entire argument these boards make, printed in one line.
IMG is third because of who it has played and what it did to them. It did not play at all last week, which is a fact about a schedule rather than about a football team, and it held its place because nobody in front of it was beaten.
Which is exactly what makes Friday worth something
The host is not being flown somewhere neutral to fill out a showcase. IMG is coming to Orlando, and The First Academy gets this on its own field, in front of its own people, against the third best team we have.
There is no version of this where The First Academy loses ground. A competitive night against IMG Academy is worth more to a 4-0 team at 68 than three more comfortable Fridays would be, because comfortable Fridays are the reason it is at 68.
And the upside is real. A win here is not a nudge up the board. It is the kind of result that forces a rebuild of an entire section of the hundred.
What we are watching
Whether IMG looks like a team that has been idle. Two weeks without a game is a long time in September, and the price for that usually gets paid in the first quarter rather than the fourth.
