The La Costa Canyon Maverick football team is still riding the wave from its first ever section football title in 2008. After a solid win over a mediocre school, combined with a gift from Mission Hills (beat Tesoro, previously #5), the Mavericks are ranked #5 in the state of California according to Max Preps. Oceanside, the other San Diego powerhouse, is ranked #11 in the same poll.

The most interesting story here might not even be these rankings, but that Max Preps believes La Costa is better than traditional national power including De La Salle. De La Salle (Concord, CA) is currently ranked below LCC in their poll but DLS is ranked #14 in the nation in the USA Today Super 25 poll. De La Salle plays #4 Don Bosco Prep this weekend, and if they win, and La Costa Canyon blows out Carlsbad, does this make La Costa a top 10 team in the Nation, acording to Max Preps?

What this does not tell us about LCC or De La Salle...

No it does not. Nor would it make De La Salle a top 4 team in the nation. Rankings are fun to write about and hype up but generally early in the season, they don't mean a whole lot (right Oklahoma?). These major national polls are voted on by national writers, who also have no possible way to really understand how good teams are on the local level. They can only follow the big name teams because there are simply too many high school football programs across the nation. This is why at the end of the year you will see big name teams who have lost multiple games atop the polls.

What this does tell us about LCC?

If La Costa Canyon can run the table and go undefeated in their regular season, with this current media push, its very likely we could see the Mavericks as a top 25 team in the USA Today Super 25 rankings. The Mavericks have a couple things going for them to make this a possibility: (1) They are coming off a section championship in CA, (2) The school is becoming widely known by major sports writers because of power-house teams Coach Brown has scheduled in past years (De La Salle, Mission Viejo, Oceanside, Las Vegas, etc.), and probably the most important, (3) they have a guy named Kenny Stills who recruiters at Florida, Penn St., USC, UCLA, and LSU are absolutely drueling over. This buzz gets picked up by the college recruiting circle and bam, you have a recipe for the possibility of extordinary national rankings.

Now all they have to do is win. La Costa plays Carlsbad at El Camino High School on Friday Night.