You might think of them as quaint symbols of traditional Americana: kids playing the game for their school, classmates, parents, coaches, their town, even for the old codgers who misremember their own exploits on those playing fields.

You might think of them that way. ESPN thinks of them as cheap programming.

On Friday night, the insatiable sports network has conjured up a game anointed as the deciding contest for national high school football supremacy. The network has imported a high school team from 700 miles away in Duncan, S.C., designated as the nation's Number Two. The opponent, of course, has been assigned the arbitrary title of Number One -- Fort Lauderdale's St. Thomas Aquinas.