NATIONAL RANKINGS

Buford climbs in 4 national football polls, North Gwinnett tumbles after loss

The Wolves are the highest-ranked team from Georgia in 8 of the 9 national polls the AJC monitors.

Milton and Buford play in front of a national ESPN2 audience in Buford in August 2025. This season, the Wolves are the top team from Georgia in eight of the nine polls the AJC considers and are third behind Carrollton and Thomas County Central in the other poll, the Massey Ratings. (Jason Getz/AJC)

By Chip Saye

58 minutes ago

Buford, the defending consensus national champion, moved up in four polls and dropped in another in the national high school football rankings after Week 8 of the regular season.

The Wolves climbed from No. 5 to No. 3 in the USA Today rankings and moved up one spot in the MaxPreps (to No. 4), High School on SI (to No. 4) and NationalHSFB.com (to No. 3) polls. They moved down one place to No. 7 in the Sports Idol Nation rankings.

Buford, East Coweta, Westlake most affected by possible Douglas County forfeits

Buford remained at No. 8 in the Massey Ratings but was jumped by Thomas County Central, which moved from No. 9 to No. 7. Buford is now the third-highest-ranked Georgia team in that poll, behind No. 5 Carrollton and Thomas County Central. The Wolves are the highest-ranked Georgia team in the other polls considered by AJC Varsity.

North Gwinnett took the biggest fall among top Georgia teams after its 50-24 loss to Brookwood last week. The Bulldogs fell 33 spots in the Massey Ratings to No. 70, 32 spots in Sports Idol Nation to No. 54 and 17 spots to No. 77 in High School Football America. They also dropped out of The top 100 from their previous No. 35 spot in the MaxPreps ratings.

Here is where Georgia teams stand in several national polls. The numbers on the left are this week’s rankings; the numbers in parentheses are last week’s rankings.

A look at the top 10 Georgia high school football games for Week 9

MaxPreps

(Full Top 100 list)