MKRob Sports

There’s nothing “mythical” about Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas’ status as the nation’s top team.

The Raiders picked up right where they left off at the Citrus Bowl in December by routing Ohio’s Upper Arlington 52-7 on Saturday afternoon at Ohio Stadium in the opening game of the Burger King Kirk Herbstreit Varsity Football Series.

Aquinas (1-0), the defending national champion and two-time defending Class 5A state champion, scored 28 points in the first quarter, led 52-0 heading into the fourth and totaled 450 yards of offense to win its 25th consecutive game.

Aquinas failed to score on only two of its 10 possessions.

The Raiders dealt Upper Arlington (0-1) — which is located less than five minutes from Ohio Stadium — its worst defeat since a 56-10 loss to Cincinnati Princeton Christian in 1985, and they limited the Golden Bears to 156 total yards.

“I thought we played really well to open up, and we were pretty crisp offensively,” Aquinas coach George Smith said. “We were pretty sharp overall. In the second quarter, we had a lot of dumb penalties, but all in all, I thought we did really well.”

Some national pollsters doubted that Aquinas is as good as it was last season, when it finished as the nation’s best team by consensus.

Aquinas, which entered the season ranked No. 1 by ESPN, USA Today and the National Prep poll, slipped from the top spot in a couple of polls recently, and went down as far as sixth in MaxPreps’ National Top 25.

The Raiders gave those pollsters plenty of reason to reconsider their positions Saturday in a game that was televised on ESPN.