Buford becomes first consensus national champion from Georgia since 1991
Buford collected eight No. 1 rankings across the 10 major poll services in the week after winning the Class 6A state championship.
That collection of national titles means that Buford (15-0) is the first consensus national champion from Georgia since 1991, when LaGrange was No. 1 in USA Today, the only poll at the time.
“We can compete with anybody,” Buford senior lineman Graham Houston, a Georgia signee, said after the state championship win over Carrollton. “You could see that throughout the season how we got progressively better.”
Buford’s No. 1 rankings came from Blue Star Media, ESPN/SC Next, HSRatings.com, MaxPreps, National HSFB, SBLive, The Sporting News and USA Today.
The two services that did not name Buford a national champion were High School Football America and the Massey Ratings, which ranked them No. 4 and No. 2 respectively.
HSFA named St. Thomas Aquinas (Fla.) its national champion while the Massey Ratings had Bixby (Okla.) atop its list.
Georgia had not had a team finish No. 1 in any of those 10 services since 2015, when Colquitt County finished the season No. 1 in the HSFA poll.
Buford went into the Georgia High School Association Class 6A finals carrying a No. 1 ranking, as did its opponent Carrollton. The game, which Buford won 28-21, was seen as a de facto head-to-head national championship.
About the Author
Caitlyn Stroh-Page is the senior sports editor high school sports and college football at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her resume includes stops at Sports Illustrated Kids, Scout.com, The (Macon) Telegraph, the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader and the Athens Banner-Herald. A South Georgia native, Stroh-Page lives in the Athens area.
