Three national polls spent Monday calling St. Thomas Aquinas the best high school football team in America. Friday night, Columbus of Miami goes to Fort Lauderdale to argue about it in person.
That's the headliner. It isn't close to the whole night.
| The Friday board | SPIN national and regional ranks |
|---|---|
| Columbus (Miami) at St. Thomas Aquinas (Fort Lauderdale) | National No. 6 at National No. 5 |
| Bishop Gorman at Lone Peak (Highland, UT) | National No. 10 at Utah No. 8 |
| Corner Canyon at Liberty (Peoria, AZ) | National No. 14 at National No. 46 |
| St. John Bosco at Pittsburg (CA) | National No. 13 at NorCal No. 6 |
| Basha at Orange Lutheran (Costa Mesa, CA) | National No. 16 at SoCal No. 7 |
| Valor Christian (CO) at Mater Dei (Santa Ana) | National No. 48 at National No. 12 |
| Mission Viejo at Folsom (CA) | National No. 29 at National No. 50 |
Aquinas at fifth is our number, and Friday grades it
MaxPreps, USA Today and High School Football America all had St. Thomas Aquinas first by Monday night. Aquinas is fifth on the SPIN national Top 50, and we put it there on purpose.
Beating DeSoto of Texas 38-14 is the best win on the Aquinas resume. It's still one win. The four teams we kept above Aquinas are a combined 7-0 in 2026.
Columbus is the team that beat Bishop Gorman 33-28, and that final score flatters Gorman. The Explorers led 20-0 in the second quarter and 33-15 with 7:58 on the clock. Thirteen of Gorman's 28 points came inside the last 2:33, with a recovered onside kick in between, and Columbus had to fall on a second onside kick to end it.
Aquinas has the defense everyone wants to talk about. Columbus might have the better one. It held Gorman to 15 points until the game was already gone, and five-star A'mir Sears caught two touchdown passes and intercepted three of Gorman's, the last at 6:28.
Aquinas answers with Julius Jones Jr., the Notre Dame commit who just broke the school's career receiving record, per MaxPreps and SI. Both teams are 2-0, and kickoff is 7 p.m. Eastern on the NFHS Network.
If Aquinas handles Columbus, fifth was too low and we'll say so.
Gorman is keeping a promise it made in Las Vegas
The other team from that Columbus game has a Friday problem of its own, and it's a year old.
Last September, after officials ended a Gorman-Lone Peak game in the third quarter, Gorman coach Brent Browner crossed the field, told Lone Peak's Bart Brockbank he was sorry about it, and told him Gorman would come to Utah. That's per the Review-Journal. Friday at 7 p.m. Mountain in Highland, he pays it off.
What ended that game: Gorman led 21-0 after a quarter, Lone Peak got two touchdown catches from Jaron Pula to climb within 28-14, and Gorman answered with five seconds left in the half for a 35-14 lead.
Then, with 9:25 left in the third, the Review-Journal reported an altercation on the Lone Peak sideline and more than three Knights coming onto the field. Officials ruled Lone Peak had violated the bench rule and awarded Gorman the game. It's carried as 35-14 with a forfeit attached to it.
Nevada doesn't leave that one to judgment. It's written into administrative code: at least three players leave the bench and enter the field during a bench-clearing incident, and the team forfeits. Not may forfeit. Forfeits.
Friday is in Utah County under the UHSAA, and Utah's version carries no number at all. Officials may end the contest. One or both teams may forfeit. May, not must. Same conduct, different machinery.
Now temper the rematch talk, because this isn't that Lone Peak. Jaron Pula, who caught both of those touchdowns, is a freshman receiver at BYU, and so is his twin brother Kennan. The Knights belong to quarterback Cruz Christensen and Utah commit Dillon Sykes now, and their August ended with IMG Academy coming to Highland and leaving with a 59-3 win.
Gorman is 2-1 and 10th on our board, off its first loss since last September. The Deseret News' Parry Power Guide has Friday inside four points. For this version of Lone Peak, anything closer than 59-3 is progress.
Corner Canyon goes to Peoria, and there's a second Liberty to keep straight
Corner Canyon, 14th on our board at 3-0, plays at Liberty of Peoria, Arizona, the Lions, who came onto the national board this week at 46.
Corner Canyon won this fixture 45-14 in Draper last September. Liberty gets the return date, and neither of these is the team that played that game. When our Arizona board debuted in August we said a Liberty win here would reorder how we read that state. That offer stands.
Liberty spent its opener making it sound reasonable. Sophomore quarterback Jason Haines threw for more than 400 yards and four touchdowns in a 58-18 win over Mesa High.
Nobody has finished within 30 points of Corner Canyon this season. Davis lost 51-14. Timpview went down 40-7, and Fremont didn't score at all in a 49-0 loss. The schedule has finally found an opponent who can ask a real question.
Kickoff is 7 p.m. in Peoria, which is 8 p.m. in Utah, because Arizona doesn't move its clocks.
Set your clock and check your spelling, because a different school named Liberty, the one in Henderson, Nevada, hosts a Utah team the same night. If a "Liberty beat Utah" headline turns up Saturday morning, check the state before you believe anything else in it.
California pulls in Arizona and Colorado on the same Friday
Basha of Chandler, Arizona, the defending Open Division champion and 16th on our board, plays Orange Lutheran, our SoCal No. 7, at Orange Coast College. Basha won this matchup 30-24 at home last September, when Orange Lutheran was ranked 23rd in the country. Now it makes the trip, and this is the game Arizona can least afford to lose.
Valor Christian at Mater Dei teaches us more than it looks like it should, and not for the reason you'd guess. Valor is 2-0 and ranked second in Colorado behind Cherry Creek. Mater Dei is 2-0 as well, and both of those wins came against Utah: 31-11 over American Fork, then 32-26 over Orem in a game Orem tied in the fourth quarter.
So we have two readings on Utah through Mater Dei and none at all on Colorado. Friday supplies the third.
Mission Viejo at Folsom is a rematch the Bulldogs would rather not relive. Mission Viejo won 53-14 in Orange County last September, which MaxPreps called Folsom's worst defeat since 2006. Folsom gets it at home on the blue turf this time.
That may not be the comfort it sounds like. Folsom needed overtime to get past Cardinal Newman in its opener, and it gets Mission Viejo without senior receiver Rob Larson, who the Folsom Times reports is out with a hamstring injury and expected to miss at least six weeks. Mission Viejo, 29th on our board, has scored 132 points in two games. Folsom is 50th.
St. John Bosco, 13th on our board, goes north to Pittsburg, our NorCal No. 6, in the cleanest SoCal-against-NorCal test of the week. Pittsburg opened 40-7 over Monterey Trail. Bosco's only loss this season is to Gorman, and we would be surprised if this one is close.
Two of the best teams in California won't be on a field at all. Sierra Canyon, eighth on our board, and Centennial of Corona, 11th, are both idle.
Baltimore, Texas, and a Hawaii team in Orange County
St. Frances Academy of Baltimore, our national No. 1, plays at Vero Beach in Florida. The Panthers have played one game; the four teams behind them have each played two. A second data point is worth about as much here as a win.
Allen hosts DeSoto in Texas, and DeSoto needs it more. The Fighting Eagles are 0-1 after Aquinas beat them 38-14, they have a national reputation to repair, and Allen just held Duncanville to seven points.
The reputation part is not only about the scoreboard. DeSoto's captains skipped the pregame handshake at the coin toss in Fort Lauderdale, the video traveled, and the school apologized. DeSoto's program called it a chance for its young men to learn from a mistake, and athletic director Dr. M.T. Tyeskie said the captains made a poor decision that is not the school's standard. Aquinas athletic director Twan Russell asked everyone to leave it there, saying "these are kids" and that people were being very hard on a good team, and said DeSoto's coach had apologized to him. Coach Claude Mathis has since said his players were hit with racist comments online, and told the Dallas Morning News they were subjected to racist comments before the game as well. High School On SI reported it could not independently verify that account. Friday is the first chance any of it gets settled on a field.
Duncanville, down 25 spots to 34th on our board, hosts Cedar Hill and needs to prove the Allen game was a bad night and not a diagnosis. Southlake Carroll goes to North Crowley with both teams 1-0.
St. Joseph's Prep of Philadelphia opens its season at Brentwood Academy in Tennessee, which is a lot to ask of a first Friday. Everybody else in this article is two or three games into the year. Edna Karr of New Orleans opens Friday too. American Heritage of Plantation plays at Chaminade-Madonna in Hollywood, Florida, with both teams 1-1.
DeMatha goes to Imhotep Charter in Philadelphia this weekend. So does IMG Academy, our national No. 4, which plays St. Louis of Honolulu at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. A Florida boarding school and a Hawaii powerhouse are settling it in Orange County.
By Saturday morning somebody's number is wrong. Ours or theirs. That's the entire reason they play the games.
