OldSchoolLion

Right but until they show they have what it takes to be a state champion let alone nationally ranked these blasphemy rankings need to stop 

Don't worry badbird.  Another 10 state titles and I think STA will be a solid #2.   

sort of like a "make a wish" poll, huh?

Imagine this.  One of the richest men in Miami, who is also a football junkie with a penchant for helping the underprivileged, becomes a benefactor of tiny Archbishop Curley High, a predominantly minority school not too far from inner city Miami and the wealth of hs football talent there.  He pays full tuition for 40 students to attend each year.  He is gifting the families with nice housing.  He wants to help the kids and he also wants to have one of the best hs teams in the country...and money is no issue. Kids from Central, Northwestern and Carol City are knocking down the doors to get in.   Parents from around the Southeast are calling him up and saying, "Please help my son."    
It could never happen in Florida, right?  Well, it has in Baltimore.  And it caught all of the old, storied private school programs of that talent-rich area by surprise.  St Frances Academy is a traditionally Black, Catholic school with 180 coed students.  90 are on the football team.  19 starters from last year got football scholarships.  Imagine...about 1 of every 6 boys walking the halls, if not more, is a future FBS football player.   Within 2 years they have risen from a losing program to one of the top 10 ranked teams in the country.  And it all started with a very rich man who was crazy for football, Biff Poggi.  There just might be a few such guys in south Florida, huh?
And the part about parents calling? In 2016, St Frances accepted 23 transfer players, five from out of state. In 2017, there were 15 transfers, five from out of state.  I made up the part about Curley because of the parallels with St Frances from a size and demographic perspective.  Local schools in their league refused to play them this year, and it has raised quite a fuss.  St Frances had to schedule several teams from Canada. 
Poggi was the head coach at Gilman High, and built that program into a national powerhouse.  Even while a coach at Gilman, he was donating money to St Frances.  After leaving Gilman after the 2015 season to focus his energy on St Frances, Gilman's program has tanked, and they have only won 5 games over the past 2 seasons.  A team that used to easily beat St Frances lost by a score of 50-0 during the regular season last year, and 3 of their players sustained concussions.  When the teams met again in the playoffs, some Gilman parents were concerned to allow their kids to play.  Gilman lost 44-7.
Exactly how much talent does St Frances have?  This is a school with little more than 100 boys, and 8 of them are 4/5 star players.
Chris Braswell(Jr)- 5 star DE   Multiple Power 5 offers, including Alabama
Demon Clowney(Jr)- 4 star DE   Multiple Power 5 offers (and yes, it is "that" Clowney...his cousin)
Osman Savage(Jr)-4 star LB   Multiple Power 5 offers
Shane Lee(Sr)- 4 star LB Alabama commit
Jordan Toles(Jr)- 4 star S   Multiple Power 5 offers
Darrian Dalcourt(Sr)- 4 star OL   Alabama commit
Traeshon Holden(Jr)- 4 star WR   Multiple Power 5 offers
Blake Corrum(Jr)- 4 star RB   Multiple Power 5 offers
Joachim Bangda(Sr)-3 star RB   Multiple Power 5 offers, including Alabama
Kwesi Evans(Sr)-3 star WR   Multiple FBS offers
Jordan Jakes(Sr)-3 star WR   Indiana commit
Jonathan Wallace(Jr)-3 star DT   Multiple Power 5 offers
Aaron Willis(Soph)-not yet rated   Multiple Power 5 offers
Donovan Robinson(Sr)-just transferred in  6'7" 345lb OL
    

St Thomas Aquinas might have the most numbers of highly-recruited players, but there are several schools with higher numbers of highly-recruited players per capita.  J Serra in Gardena, CA has about 1/4 the number of students of STA, but has eleven 3/4/5-star players(versus 25 for STA).  About 1 in every 30 boys walking around J Serra is a highly recruited football player.  But, believe it or not, that pales in comparison to St Frances Academy in Maryland, where 1 in every 6 boys is. 
St John Bosco(CA), St Louis(HI), Chaminade-Madonna and IMG all have more "stars" per capita than STA.  And St John's High in DC is neck-and-neck with STA from a per capita standpoint.
STA gets a lot of attention in Florida, but little Chaminade-Madonna, a school with about 500 students and one-quarter the size of St Thomas, has an incredible amount of talent for their size.  C-M has more top-tier talent per capita than any school in Florida this year.    
 
 

Lmao lol I haven’t gotten into that part of town lol but I’ll most def let u kno wen I do where I stay those hats will be shot off b4 they are voluntarily tooken off lol

St Thomas has so many problems other coaches would be happy to have.  

All of these powerhouses can be beat.  This is where coaching comes in and where folks are possibly missing the boat.  It's pretty much a given that an "average" team is not going to have the individual talent of an STA, AHP, Northwestern, etc.  So, you are not going to outdo them on speed or athleticism.  Don't even try.  So how can you beat them?  ..and  am not saying it's easy, either
mental toughness/maturity-I have seen some "great" hs teams absolutely fall apart after getting punched in the mouth.  The kids lacked mental maturity, ie how to constructively deal with adversity.  Beat them with your head.    line play-relatively speaking, line play in Florida is lagging, even on some of the elite teams.  This is a place where one could gain an edge.  And you don't need huge lineman either...an agile, 250-pounder who can move can be deadly.   qb play-some teams here may struggle with one of these big, pro-style passers you see on the West Coast.  Dual-threat qb's are a dime a dozen and everyone gets lots of practice playing against them. power running game-nearly 40 years ago, a hs rb back named Hershel Walker was 6'1" 220 lbs.  Or another guy named Earl Walker.  Kids today would struggle to handle them.  We have moved so much to 180 lb backs to squeeze that extra 0.1 seconds of 40 speed out of them. Speed is not everything.   The University of Wisconsin basketball team is notorious for overperforming.  Long ago, one of the best coaches in the business, Dick Bennett, figured out that he could not play run-and-gun with the type of players he was getting there.  So, he instituted a game plan that leveraged the talents he had, and neutralized the strengths of the types of teams he was playing.  People thought he was crazy and that the game was incredibly boring.  20 years later he has been recognized as a genius.   
 
 
 

St Thomas has so many problems other coaches would be happy to have.  

Erict Rhett      McArthur

have you ever looked at his rankings

Of course Dwyer is a threat.  Maybe they do beat STA, but your predictions reflect your feelings too much lol.   You at least gotta hide it a bit more. 
 

We are pretty rough on our young folks today, so I don't go out of my way to say such things.  But some kids today would probably go bonkers and run away if they grew up like some of us.   Parents who grew up dirt poor during the Great Depression had much different parenting techniques than the Boomers!
 

There you go.  Based on the little I saw in the video, Dillard was playing BTW's game offensively.  
Broward public schools will likely continue to have difficulty matching up with Dade's best from a purely athletic standpoint.  Why did the Canes have trouble with Penn St back in the 1987 Fiesta Bowl..a Canes team that many considered unstoppable.  There is a lot to learn from that game.
Everyone wants to play this "finesse" game today, and that's great if you have the athletes to do it.  But there aren't many teams around the country that are going to "outfinesse" the Dade County teams.  
That Penn St team was incredibly physical.  The Big 10 was known for it back in the day.  Look at the 1998 and 1999 Wisconsin teams.  Not the most exciting team to watch offensively, but with Ron Dayne at rb and those enormous farm boys on their line, they were incredibly physical and just wore people down.  By the second half of games when the dline was getting tired, Dayne would run wild.         
 

Back in the day, I think hs polls were just fun, so I couldn't blame anyone for not knocking themselves out putting that much energy into them.  But today,we are considering using polls to determine playoff spots, not to mention the important "advertising" role they play for certain schools.  We have got to do better and use a more structured, calibrated approach.  And the polls need to pass the "laughing out loud test."  CCC over Chaminade...that is really a stretch.
When I look at the FBS polls, I have a strong level of confidence that the #8 team could beat the #22 team on any one day.  I have no such confidence with the hs polls.  I posted something not too long ago about this topic.  If hs polls lack predictive power, ie promoting the team with the best chance in the playoffs, what good are they other than a chest-beating tool for some? 
 

These are all valid points- and things discussed by myself and others.   It was explained to me that the poll doesn't mean CCC would beat Chaminade at all. It simply means that relative to the schedule played and in front of each team- these are the teams having the best regular seasons compared to who they're playing.

 A fair point, but that's not a sentiment shared among all pollsters.That's the issue- it's not consistent among classifications or pollsters. If that was the guidelines, I'd at least understand (but not agree) with CCC being moved to #1. I'm not sure there is a specific guideline of how to vote, and I seriously doubt any film is being watched outside of MAYBE a few Hudl highlights of a few teams. My big gripe is- how do 15 teams get a vote in 3A? Who is watching all 15 teams?  Between myself, my brother, pop, cousin and hubby we watch MAYBE 4 games at most per week and we follow high school football in the lower classes pretty closely.  How are these pollsters doing this for 8 classifications?

On paper, Chaminade lost to Deerfield Beach by 3 at home.  If Deerfield Beach played at CCC, I would  take Deerfield Beach by 3 TD's or more most people would, yet we have multiple polls where Chaminade is not ranked #1.  Now, the debate is between CCC and Chaminade; however, I have no idea what Florida High is doing #2 this week.  I still maintain that in 3A it's Chaminade and then a long drop, CCC and then a drop.. and then there's a bunch of teams clumped together.

Personally, I think it's a moot point as I see Tampa Catholic upsetting CCC next week.  Anytime CCC has been ranked #1 (2013, 2016) and had to travel to Tampa Catholic they've lost- I see it happening again on 9/7. That will put Chaminade back to #1, but it's my opinion that Chaminade should not need TC to beat CCC to be #1 in the state when they're the defending champions and only lost to an 8A powerhouse.

Overall, I have a lot of gripes with the poll and have sent some E-mails out to the pollsters. I doubt I'll receive a response, but I'm interested in the thought process.

 

You sure are old school alright. My momma would have done the same thing to me as your Mama done you... cept she would have pinched my ear and twisted it first. 

Jessica, Let's be cynical together LOL  I wonder how many people doing these polls really do their homework.  For example, how many of these pollsters, "pro" or amateur, know with absolute certainty that Chaminade was not missing a key player(s) in the game?  ..or any other team, for that matter.  How many people are watching actual game film to see the story not told by scores and statistics? 
What is this poll actually telling us?  Does this mean that if Clearwater Central Catholic played Chaminade 10 times, that the pollsters think CCC would win 6 or more games?  Or does it mean something else?  There are so many different polls out there and without a stated purpose and and criteria for ranking, I find them pretty useless.
It's a bit like me telling someone I can lift 300 pounds.  There are a set of assumptions that go along with that statement, and without knowing them, it's a pretty useless statement.  Is that a bench press, deadlift, squat, curl?  Without a point of reference, it doesn't mean much.
 
 
 

Was expecting a picture of Pipe Dreams when I read the thread title...

He’s more of hoping then really thinking Dwyer will be there lmao.. Comical lmao

I watched some game film of the Chaminade vs Deerfield game.  I had heard that Chaminade was completely stymied offensively, but I saw some nice offensive plays by Chaminade, both running and passing.  And they were exciting on special teams.   
Chaminade's defense looked nasty and body language was one of not being intimidated.  They had a d lineman who is not on the recruiting radar who is an absolute baller.  That is not an ordinary Deerfield Beach offense, with one of the top junior rb's in the country and a host of talented receivers.
I was very impressed and would not be surprised if Chaminade bulldozes the Alabama team this weekend.   

poor Clewiston.  I remember when they used to compete for state titles.

Good morning!  There's a lot to discuss so this post might be lengthy. Kudos to my younger brother for helping me with information over the duration of the weekend.

CLASS 3A RANKINGS WEEK 1 REVIEW

#1) Chaminade-Madonna:  Losing to Deerfield beach 13-10 in a back and forth contest is nothing to be ashamed of. Last year the Lions were dismantled by Miami Central which was cause for concern. There are still heavy hitters on the schedule including American Heritage Plantation, Booker T and Uschool, but I don't think the Lions will see the depth of a defense like the Bucks.

#2) Clearwater Central Catholic: CCC knocked off Berkeley Prep in a 2 night affair. On Friday evening the Berkeley Bucs lead by QB Joshua Youngblood (41 offers, Temple commit) went up 7-0 in a thunderous downpour. The teams met again on Saturday evening where the Marauders outscored the Bucs 35-7 the rest of the way. Star RB and All-State Running Back Jerzhan Newton did not play offense accordign to the times, only defense. He will be returning to offense this week giving the Marauders a bigtime weapon heading into week 2.

#3) FSU School: I mistakenly mentioned last week that Florida High played Blountstown. They do, but Florida High had a bye in week 1. FSU DRS and Blountstown play this Friday.

#4) American Heritage Delray: Don't look now, but the Stallions are creeping back into power. The Stallions knocked off 8A Belen Jesuit 36-29. This is quickly becoming a team to keep an eye on in 3A.

#5) Ft. White: Ft. White QB Dylan Blair completed 11 of 15 for 156 yards and 2 TD's to help the Indians take a half-time lead but in the second half Suwanee was able to make the necessary adjustments which resulted in a FW loss. Suwanee scored 21 points off of FW turnovers.

CLASS 3A TOP 7 WEEK 2

#1) Chaminade-Madonna
#2) Clearwater Central Catholic
#3) FSU School
#4) American Heritage Delray
#5) Tampa Catholic

MAXPREPS SMALL SCHOOL NATIONAL RANKINGS

Max Preps released their top 25 small schools. Maxpreps defines a small school as a team with genuinely under 1000 students enrolled and playing in Florida classifications 1A, 2A and 3A. Also note that the poll does not seem to include 3A teams who have elected to move to 5A such as Jacksonville Trinity Christian.

Chaminade-Madonna comes in at #2.
Clearwater Central Catholic comes in at #8.
Madison County comes in at #18.
Champgnat Catholic comes in at #22.
Pahokee comes in at #24.

https://tinyurl.com/y8gq8yb5 is the link to the entire poll.

GAMES OF THE WEEK
Chaminade-Madonna vs Muscle Shoals (AL)

The Lions hit the road for the Freedom Bowl which sees them take on a good but not great Muscle Shoals team from Alabama. The Lions may have lost last week in a nailbiter, but they're still a top 100 team nationally. Muscle Shoals defeated Deshler 31-0 last week and is currently ranked the #22 team in Alabama according to AL.com. The Trojans of Muscle Shoals appear to have a solid Junior QB and RB one-two punch and are physical up front, still- being the #22 ranked team in Alabama probably puts them around the 100-110 mark in Florida. Chaminade should represent Florida well and win this one big.

Chaminade 38, Muscle Shoals 10.

Melbourne Central Catholic vs Corinth (Missouri)
The Hustlers continued their winning ways with a 41-19 win over the IMG Varsity team. This week things get a bit more serious as the Hustlers take on a 1-1 Warriors team from Missouri. Corinth lost last week in OT to the #5 team in Missorui Tupelo. MCC had a huge graduating class, but there's a lot of speed on the roster- especially LaAnthony Valentine at RB.  Atheltically, MCC is probably a bit better; however, Corinth is playing at home. MCC is not very big along the lines, their biggest linemen that sees playing time is only 240 according to Maxpreps.  Corinth had multiple players 6'2, 275 and bigger.  MCC will most likely have a significant speed advantage in this one. Speed Kills, but I expect a close matchup from what I've heard.

MCC 28, Corinth 21

Tampa Berekely Prep vs Calvary Christian (Clearwater)

One of the questions I've received quite often is a variation of the following question: How good is Calvary Christian?  The hype started the moment Reggie Crume was hired and superstar QB Harold Cook transferred in from Alonso. Calvary returned 2 top notch WR's in Kai Martin and Kendrick Maynard Jr.  They then added Richie Illaraza from CCC- they are big up front with multiple 290lb linemen and then added a star DE in Bo Planeta who transferred in from Mitchell HS.  The schedule has left a lot to be desired for though. Their wins are against St. Pete Catholic in the kickoff classic and Umatilla last week.

Berkeley Prep knocked off class 2A state semifinalist Victory Christian in the kickoff classic 21-7 in 1 half of play. They started hot against CCC but the Marauders asserted their dominance in the 2nd quarter which resulted in Berkeley Prep losing 35-14. This will be the toughest game for Calvary Christian this far. Berekely Prep has one of the top pure athletic QB's in the state and as big as Calvary is in the trenches, Berkeley is bigger

For Calvary to be taken seriously they need a win that says, "We've arrived". Beating Umatilla 100-0 isn't going to turn anybodys head, but a win over Berkeley Prep at Berekley? Now people will start talking. Still, Berkeley Prep is coached by a legend Dom Ciao and it's really hard to see this Bucs team starting 0-2 especially since they still have one of the top linebackers in the country Jaylen Harrell patrolling the field. 

Berekley Prep 24, Calvary 21.