De La Salle’s 2001 team named best high school football team ever by ESPN
The 2001 De La Salle Spartans, with junior running back Maurice Jones-Drew, were named as the top high school football team ever by ESPN
Throughout his NFL career, Maurice Jones-Drew had one topic that could always get teammates riled up and ready to argue:
Which was better, my high school or yours?
Jones-Drew was always arguing for his De La Salle teams, especially the 2001 squad. At least one major national publication has now agreed with him.
Last Friday, ESPN’s Bill Connelly, a renowned college football analyst and historian, released his list of the top 50 high school football teams of all time.
And taking first place? Jones-Drew (then Maurice Drew) shone for the Spartans in 2001.
“It’s awesome to hear that,” said Jones-Drew, who averaged nearly 12 yards per carry and scored 26 touchdowns as a junior on the 2001 team. “To be ranked No. 1 in our country’s rich history of high school football is pretty amazing.” Being a part of it is definitely something to be proud of.”
Of course, both Jones-Drew and Connelly admit that the list is entirely subjective, with Jones-Drew saying, “You don’t really know.”
After all, teams from as far back as the 1910s appear on Connelly’s list, representing states from coast to coast. There are three teams from California, four from Texas and Florida, three from Ohio, and one each from Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, and Virginia in the top 20.
But it’s difficult to argue with De La Salle’s pedigree and sheer volume of talent, especially when it’s on a 151-game winning streak. Connelly wrote that De La Salle put his self-proclaimed “no more than two teams from one school” rule to the test by ranking the 2003 Spartans 15th and the 2001 team first.
While MaxPreps did not rank back-to-back seasons from the same school, it did rank the 2003 team as the No. 2 team overall, as well as the 1998 team at No. 19 and the 1994 team at No. 34.
However, both rankings had De La Salle’s 2001 team at No. 1, which may have been aided by Long Beach Poly, which Jones-Drew said “should be ranked higher” than Connelly’s No. 50 spot.
Long Beach Poly (circa 2001) is the only team on Connelly’s list to lose a game, and the loss came in the first-ever game between teams ranked No. 1 vs. No. 2 nationally — a game so significant that De La Salle’s 29-15 victory, with Jones-Drew rushing for four touchdowns, was covered in Sports Illustrated.
“In the midst of the most unstoppable winning streak in high school sports history, they put together their most unstoppable team,” Connelly wrote. “The Spartans had to be No. 1 on this list.”
Jones-Drew, now back at his alma mater as a quarterbacks coach, didn’t see the list before the Spartans’ 35-14 loss to Southern California powerhouse Orange Lutheran on Friday. However, he first learned of it when a friend texted it to him, and he has since reconnected with several other former Spartans about the ranking.
“It’s cool that a lot of my former teammates got back in contact after that,” Jones-Drew said. “It’s been awesome to rekindle relationships with people I haven’t talked to in a long time as a result of it.”
“Part of the reason I coach at De La Salle now is because of the impact those coaches had on me during that time in high school.”
What about the NFL locker rooms? Jones-Drew and Derek Landri, his former teammate at both De La Salle and the Jaguars, used to show his Jacksonville teammates highlight tapes.
People would challenge the former Spartans, and smack talk would fly. But what about now?
“They haven’t contacted me yet — but they have read it,” Jones-Drew said. “It’s always best when you don’t have to say anything and everything is just there.”
And Jones-Drew’s pride in what the Spartans accomplished lives on to this day.
“For us to be number one, I think it’s well-suited,” Jones-Drew said. “I don’t think there will ever be another high school team like that again.”
