On Monday, MaxPreps released its list for the most popular high school football teams in the nation. For South Dakota, the list included four 11AAA schools and a lone 11AA school.
- Sioux Falls Lincoln
- Sioux Falls Roosevelt
- Sioux Falls Washington
- Brandon Valley
- Pierre T.F. Riggs
Before you jump in to disagree, let’s first look at the formula that MaxPreps used to determine their list. The teams were chosen based on ‘most views on team pages combined with [social media] followers’ between the dates of April 2019 to April 2020.
Pierre makes a lot of sense considering the amount of attention they received in 2019 with being the highest scoring team in South Dakota 11-man history. The other four schools are from the Sioux Empire and Minnehaha County, which is the most populous county in the Mt. Rushmore State.
The more people you have, the higher the higher the popularity - right? Lincoln, Roosevelt, Washington, and Brandon Valley are four of the largest schools in all of South Dakota. And with the recent season Pierre had with making headlines each week, the list begins to take shape.
Pierre was also the only state championship team from 2019 to make the list. O’Gorman, Canton, Bridgewater-Emery/Ethan, Viborg-Hurley, Canistota/Freeman, and Colman-Egan all won state championships, but did NOT eclipse MaxPreps popularity meter. Bishop O’Gorman high school is even in Sioux Falls, but their enrollment is significantly lower than the other Sioux Falls schools, and the Knights petition up to be in the top class of high school football in the state.
Popularity shouldn’t be confused with passion, either. If there was a list of the top-5 most passionate high school football fan bases in South Dakota, this list could look much different.