Contributing Writer
Max Fielder covers high school football for SPIN, from Friday night recaps in Utah and Northern California to the weekly SPIN Power 100 rankings. He writes from the sideline, not the box score.
No. 20 Centennial of Corona and No. 18 De La Salle meet Saturday afternoon at California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, the closest ranked pairing on the SPIN Power 100 this week.
Corner Canyon at Skyridge in Utah, Miami Central at Miami Northwestern in Florida, St. John's College at St. Edward in Ohio, and Del Oro at Oak Ridge in Northern California.
No. 30 Thomas County Central goes to No. 27 Lee County on Friday night in Leesburg, Georgia, three places apart on the SPIN Power 100.
SPIN Out West Top 25, Week 6. Bishop Gorman moves up to third after winning at Mater Dei, Mater Dei falls three, Centennial of Peoria wins by 13 and falls ten, and Cherry Creek's record changed this week without a game being played.
SPIN SoCal Top 10, Week 6. St. John Bosco and Mater Dei swap places, JSerra comes on at eighth after beating Bishop Amat, and Santa Margarita is still 5-0 and still first.
SPIN Nevada Top 10, Week 6. Bishop Gorman holds at No. 1 and climbs to 10th in the country. Mater Academy East, Liberty of Henderson and Coronado all move up. Legacy is new at eighth.
SPIN Power 100, Week 6. Baylor School moves to fifth, North Crowley to 13th, and Duncanville drops to the last line on the board.
Eight NorCal board teams played in Week 6 and seven won. The only loss was Pittsburg falling 42-35 to Mission Viejo, which sits seventh on our SoCal board.
Nine Nevada board teams played in Week 6 and six won. Two of the three losses came from inside the board, and the third was a one point road loss in California.
Every ranked team, every result. 80 wins, 14 losses, six byes, and a 42-game streak in the ground.
No. 33 Orange Lutheran at No. 8 Sierra Canyon is SoCal 6 against SoCal 2, and the visitor has already been within a point of a top thirty team this season.
No. 3 IMG Academy at No. 68 The First Academy is the Florida Game of the Week, and the team with the extra win is the one ranked lower.
No. 12 Bishop Gorman at No. 10 Mater Dei, Friday night in Santa Ana, is the tightest pairing on our board this week and the one game that can move our top ten.
Colorado, Oregon and Washington come into the footprint. Eight states, eleven new teams, and a calendar that explains the records better than the records do.
The Week 5 SPIN regional boards. Utah's top team is 4-1 with four unbeaten behind it, three of Southern California's unbeaten sit eighth, ninth and tenth, and Nevada's 5-0 team is second.
The top six did not move a place, six teams came off, and five of the six that replaced them got there by beating a ranked team.
Seventy-five wins, seventeen losses, eight idle, and seventeen shutouts in a week that mostly went to form
Nine wins, and the one loss was a shutout by a team that is not on the board
Three byes at the top, four Thursday games in Clark County, and one loss to a Utah school
Cardinal Newman 31, Archbishop Riordan 0, and it is the only Northern California board team that lost.
A bye week at the top, a Thursday slate in Las Vegas, and Faith Lutheran giving up 54.
Plenty of ranked teams lost this week. One of them lost like this.
Friday Edition. Eleven games, three of them ranked against ranked, and a 65-0 in Tucson.
The Dragons came back from 27-0 down to beat Jenks. Eight days later they lost by 30. Allen has beaten Duncanville and DeSoto by a combined 63.
A blocked field goal in the semifinals, a SPIN All-American who also kicks, a four-year starter on the Mater Dei line, and a Monarchs team playing three quarterbacks.
The defending Georgia champion has won 17 straight. The Rockets have already gone to California and won a game their quarterback took over himself.
The SPIN Power 100 goes to a hundred names for the first time, and fourth place is not an insult
Gorman is 3-1 and still the only argument. Churchill County is 4-0 and the only four-win team on the board. All four losses came against teams from somewhere else.
Two of the top six played each other and one of them had to lose. Liberty of Peoria beat the No. 14 team in the country. Duncanville got its season back.
If you are a NorCal fan, the top of this board could not have gone better. Four and five played a real game, and six took St. John Bosco to the fourth quarter.
The Trinity League is still the standard and the top of this board is elite. What we do not know yet is how good Bosco and Mater Dei actually are.
Basha lost in Costa Mesa. Then the rest of the top five went out and beat a ranked team apiece, and the state came out of the weekend ahead.
Corner Canyon controlled about eighty percent of that game and lost it anyway. That is what the road does, and it is what an offense with a question mark does.
Corner Canyon led 24-14 in Peoria and did not score again. Liberty of Peoria scored the last 24 points of the night and beat Utah's No. 1 38-24. We made a promise about this game in August. It is now due.
Orange Lutheran beat Basha 23-17 on Friday night. On the same Friday, Liberty of Peoria beat Corner Canyon 38-24. Arizona spent one evening being reordered from both ends.
Mission Viejo beat Folsom 53-14 in Orange County last September, the worst defeat the Bulldogs had taken since 2006. On Friday night in Folsom, without their leading receiver, the Bulldogs won 35-21.
St. John Bosco beat Pittsburg 26-14 in the East Bay on Friday night. The Braves turned it over twice early, trailed 14-13 at the break, and then did not let Pittsburg score again.
Bishop Gorman came to Highland to keep a promise it made a year ago in Las Vegas and left with a 38-14 win. Brayley Manning had two interceptions and two pass breakups before halftime. Lone Peak lost by 24 and looked better doing it than it has all season against this class of opponent.
St. Thomas Aquinas beat Columbus 31-24 in Fort Lauderdale on Friday night, four days after three national polls called the Raiders the best team in America. The Raiders led 24-7 in the third quarter. They did not lead by 17 again.
St. Thomas Aquinas of Fort Lauderdale woke up Monday as the No. 1 team in three national polls. Friday it hosts Columbus of Miami, the team that just beat Bishop Gorman. And Gorman keeps a promise it made in Las Vegas a year ago.
SPIN Week 4 regional rankings: Utah, NorCal, SoCal, Arizona and Nevada
The SPIN National Top 50, Week 4
Mater Dei won 32-26. Eight days earlier it beat American Fork by 20. Utah's second-highest classification had a very good weekend.
Our No. 12 handled our No. 16 in the Broward County Showcase, on the same Saturday Bishop Gorman lost in Florida.
A'Mir Sears had three interceptions and two touchdowns, and Columbus was four minutes from a rout before the Gaels made it close.
SPIN's No. 30 won 38-14 at home in Ramsey
SPIN's No. 28 beat Centerville 50-20 on the road
SPIN's No. 21 beat Rabun Gap-Nacoochee 31-15 at home in Indiana
SPIN's No. 47 lost 35-14 at the Battle at the Beach in Ocean City
Louis Fortier finished 19-of-23 for 441 and four touchdowns in a 67-17 win
Lee County beat SPIN's No. 17 23-20 after trailing by 12 at the break
St. John Bosco 45, Roman Catholic 25, and a field goal as the half expired made it 38-7
SPIN's No. 23 beat our No. 9 in both teams' first game of the season
A 21-0 lead became overtime. A Jaytoin Thomas interception ended it 35-28.
Brady Cloherty threw seven touchdown passes in Chicago, the last one on fourth-and-8
SPIN's No. 1 opened its season 49-35 at DeLand after a first half that went sideways
Ca'ron Williams' pick-six on the last play of the third quarter held up 21-20 at Centennial
American Heritage and Mount Carmel came off the SPIN Top 50 on Aug. 24. Four nights later they beat our No. 39 and our No. 35. Eight ranked teams lost across Thursday and Friday, four of them to opponents we do not rank, and the best team in America needed a second half to get out of Florida.
The second ranked team in Utah beat the sixth 42-7, went seven straight quarters without allowing a point along the way, and looks like a problem for everybody above it.
Tied at seven at halftime on a neutral field in Broward County, the 14th ranked team in America scored the last 17 points and won 24-7.
SPIN opens its Northern California board with De La Salle on top and Folsom second. Serra is third on a roster read that three head to head results argue against, and Central East debuts fifth above two teams it plays inside eight days.
Bishop Gorman moves to No. 2 after the best win in America this month. Lone Peak is off the board entirely. Five teams came off and five came on.
Bishop Gorman beat St. John Bosco 38-28 at Fertitta Field and Churchill County went to 2-0 by a combined three points. Everywhere else, Nevada went to California and came back beaten.
Bishop Gorman won 38-28 in Las Vegas and IMG Academy won 59-3 in Utah. Seven teams from the SPIN Top 50 lost over three days, and three of them lost to teams outside it.
Bishop Gorman led St. John Bosco 21-0, saw the lead vanish, and won 38-28 on Ace Amina's four touchdown passes, the last a 54-yard dagger by former Brave Corey Hinton Jr.
Baylor led our No. 12 by four entering the fourth quarter. Then it scored 21 points in twelve minutes and lightning ended the night early.
SPIN opens the 2026 Arizona Top 10 with Basha first, Hamilton second and two-time Open champion Liberty of Peoria fourth. Corner Canyon beat Liberty by 31 last fall. The Lions get them back Sept. 4.
The opening weekend needed one extra day. Faith Lutheran lost a game that took two days to play, Edison finished a perfect California trip, and one Las Vegas score is in open dispute.
Nevada's No. 2 flew to Oahu in a storm week and lost to the top team in the Star-Advertiser rankings, with a first-time starter throwing for 273 on the Patriots.
West of Salt Lake City beating Arbor View is one score from one Friday. It is also the only game of the opening weekend that put a Utah board team against a Nevada board team, and Utah took it.
Our National No. 11 trailed 37-0 before it scored. The first board casualty of 2026 has film nobody in Loganville wants, and the winner has our full attention.
The 2026 season opened with our No. 11 down 37-0 in Atlanta, our No. 3 winning a shutout the weather ended at halftime, and storms rewriting two states.
The home crowd got the first half it wanted. Then Corner Canyon remembered what it was, and the whole thing was over in about twenty minutes.
Mountain Ridge trailed Skyridge 20-6 in Herriman on Thursday night, then outscored the Falcons 35-6 to win 41-26. We had the Sentinels sixth in Utah. Week 1 says that was too low.
Bosco at Gorman leads a ten-day stretch that settles most of the arguments we started in July
MaxPreps says Bosco. USA Today says IMG. ESPN says Buford. Rivals says DeSoto. We say Baltimore, and we brought the December film to prove it. The full SPIN Preseason Top 50, below.
Records Are Only One Factor
Utah's Top 10 Recap
Defensive Brilliance, Strategic Plays, and Bulldog Triumph Unfold in a Thrilling Football Showdown