By RepMax Media Staff · RepMax Media · September 8, 2026

Columbus had just tied it at 24 with 6:40 left. First play from scrimmage, Aquinas ball. Tyler Reid took the handoff and went 80 yards, and by the time anybody in Brian Piccolo Memorial Stadium had processed it, the No. 1 team in America was still the No. 1 team in America.

That's how you hold a throne in September.

Welcome to The Tuesday Ten — RepMax Media's weekly look at the national high school football Top 10, who moved, who's about to, and what it means for the recruits inside those programs. Rankings updated September 7.

The National Top 10

Team State Record Move Why they're here

1. 1 St. Thomas Aquinas FL 3-0 — Held off No. 7 Columbus 31-24. Seventeen straight wins.
2. 2 St. Frances Academy MD 2-0 — Undefeated, untested, and nobody wants the smoke.
3. 3 IMG Academy FL 3-0 — 3-0 and No. 1 in the Rivals national composite.
4. 4 Santa Margarita CA 3-0 — Highest-ranked team in California. Carson Palmer's second year.
5. 5 Buford GA 2-0 — Defending MaxPreps national champs, first from Georgia to do it.
6. 6 Sierra Canyon CA 2-0 ▲1 Beat then-No. 21 Chaminade-Madonna 24-7. Up 11 spots from preseason.
7. 7 Columbus FL 2-1 ▼1 Beat the No. 1 team, then lost to the No. 1 team. Eight days apart.
8. 8 Bishop Gorman NV 3-1 — Beat St. John Bosco 38-28. Only loss is to Columbus.
9. 9 St. John Bosco CA 2-1 — Preseason No. 1 in July. Still the most dangerous 2-1 in America.
10. 10 Allen TX 2-0 — Texas's lone Top 10 rep, up eight from the preseason board.

Florida three. California three. Georgia, Maryland, Nevada and Texas one apiece.

Only two teams moved. Sierra Canyon and Columbus swapped six and seven. Everybody else held.

The performance that decided a ranking

Reid didn't have a good game. He had a game that reset what people expect from him for the rest of the season.

Thirteen carries. 338 yards. All four Aquinas touchdowns. Runs of 63, 80 and 80, plus a three-yard touchdown catch from quarterback Blake Calixte. That's 26 yards a carry, and the Pitt commit is the younger brother of former Pitt back Desmond Reid.

Here's the number that should actually scare people. Take away both 80-yard runs — 160 yards gone — and Reid still averaged 16.2 yards on the other eleven carries.

The explosions weren't the fluke. They were the pattern.

Columbus is 2-1 and it means nothing bad

The Explorers went 4-8 last season. This year they beat then-No. 1 Bishop Gorman 33-28 behind a two-touchdown, three-interception night from five-star Miami commit A'mir Sears, then turned around six days later and played the new No. 1 to a one-score finish.

They dropped one spot for it. One.

Miami head coach Mario Cristobal was in the building for the Gorman game watching Sears. Quarterback Kai Moore threw for over 400 yards that night. If you're building a recruiting board out of this Top 10, Columbus is the roster to comb through — nobody rises from unranked to seventh in three weeks without talent nobody had properly evaluated in August.

The Vo Line

Our numbers desk prints one uncomfortable stat about this board every week.

Sierra Canyon moved up to No. 6 this week without playing a game. Their last snap was August 27 against Chaminade-Madonna. They rose because Columbus lost.

Six of these ten teams have not played a single currently-ranked opponent. The whole Top 10 rests on 27 games combined — 2.7 per team. MaxPreps says as much on its own rankings page: complete national rankings return once all states have begun postseason play.

Sierra Canyon hosts Orange Lutheran on September 18. Orange Lutheran just beat No. 12 Basha 23-17. That game tells you whether No. 6 is real. — Elias Vo

Knocking on the door

Baylor (TN, 3-0) is 11th. Carrollton (GA, 3-0) climbed two to 12th. Centennial (CA, 1-1) holds 13th and Mater Dei (CA, 3-0) moved up one to 14th.

That's five California programs inside the national top 14 — Santa Margarita, Sierra Canyon, St. John Bosco, Centennial and Mater Dei. Nobody else has more than three.

The biggest riser on the entire board isn't in the top 20. North Crowley (TX, 2-0) jumped eight spots to 22nd. Miami Central moved up three to 21st, and Louisville Trinity climbed four to 23rd.

What moves the board by next Tuesday

St. Thomas Aquinas travels to Dillard on September 10. Columbus is at Palmetto the same night. Sierra Canyon hosts St. Louis on the 10th before the Orange Lutheran test on the 18th. Mater Dei is set for the MaxPreps Game of the Week spotlight.

Aquinas has the shortest path to staying at No. 1 — Dillard is 1-1. The Raiders' real problem isn't this week. It's that a 17-game winning streak means every remaining opponent gets their season made by ending it.

Your turn

The Tuesday Ten runs every week, and it's not a monologue.

Who's ranked too high? Who's getting robbed? And if you had the No. 1 vote today — Aquinas, St. Frances, IMG, or somebody nobody's talking about yet — who takes it?

Drop your Top 10 in the comments. We read them, and the ones that make an argument get quoted in next Tuesday's edition.

Next Tuesday, same time. Somebody on this list is going to lose before then.

Subscribe to The Tuesday Ten and get the board in your inbox before the debate starts.