Congrats everyone, you survived the offseason. It’s been a long 8 months but the high school football season is back. If you have been a fan of ours over the years you know how we feel about preseason polls. That being said we give the people what they want. There seems to be even more questions than ever entering this year thanks to the continued proliferation of transfers. The season is less than a week away and we still don’t know who is eligible for some of the top teams in the country including Chandler and Marietta to name a couple. The amount of transfers also makes it much harder to know what to expect from teams. How long will it take for the teams to gel. Will it be too late by the time they do. An early season loss could doom the potential title hopes for a contender. We have done our best to take input form coaches and experts from around the country to see how we think things will shake out. That being said expect a lot of changes once the season starts and we have actual results to go off of.

Our #1 team entering the season is IMG Academy. The Ascenders are stacked every year and this year is no different. They lost out on a chance to take home last year’s national title last year due to Hurricane Irma. Their always packed schedule has the most difficult 3 game stretch we have ever seen this September. They will play in Nevada against a solid Liberty team followed by a game in Washington D.C. against preseason #3 St. John’s and then back to California on a short week to play preseason #4 and defending national champs Mater Dei. If they can escape that cross country gauntlet they are going to be hard to argue against assuming they win the rest of their games. The other national polls that don’t have IMG at #1 have one of the two Trinity California powerhouses, St. John Bosco and Mater Dei, at #1. If Mater Dei goes undefeated again they will repeat. There won’t be any controversy. If the Braves and IMG both go undefeated expect a split National Champ.

Speaking of early season games there are plenty during the 1st month that should do wonders in shaking things out in the polls. Starting this week there is already a matchup of ranked opponents, #7 Chandler at #24 Centennial. Both of these powerhouses ended last season ranked but have question marks entering the season. Chandler lost a lot of skill players but return BYU QB commit Jacob Conover to lead an always potent Wolves offense. Centennial is known for consistently having one of the best offenses in the country but they still haven’t named a starting QB. As you can see from our rankings who we think will win the game, but either team winning would not shock us. Another big game this week include the battle of NorCal between Folsom and #19 De La Salle. The game between Narbonne (CA) and #11 St. Louis in Hawaii is one of the games that loses a little luster thanks to transfers. Narbonne’s stud 2021 QB Jake Garcia is likely to have to sit out the first half of the season due to transfer rules. The Gauchos will be tough to beat once he gets under center but this is a tough road game to have to play with your backup QB. There are also some big games in Georgia including Colquitt County vs. McEachern and #14 Marietta at defending AAAAA champion Rome. The Blue Devils are one of those teams that brought in a bunch of transfers and we aren’t entirely sure who has qualified. This game will give us a good idea of how god they really are.

One more bit of news our National Expert PickEm contest is back and bigger than ever. We double the number of contestants this year. This year’s contest will include picks not only from last year entrants Prep Force, MaxPreps, High School Football America and Florida HS Football but also 247Sports, Rivals, PrepNation and PrepGridiron. Don’t agree with our rankings or have a question? Let us know if the comments below. Make sure to follow us on Twitter @PrepForce1 and like us on Facebook PrepForce to keep up with our weekly rankings and the pickem contest as well as our world famous highlights.