Yesterday in front of a road crowd and an ESPN audience, Friendship Collegiate Academy made an early lead stand up in defeating one of Cincinnati’s top squads, Taft, 12-6.

Yes, big time high school football is now played on Sundays, too, to accommodate national TV.

Closer to home, Friendship’s win is huge for one reason: It justifies all the ink Washington City Paper devoted in this week’s issue to the hardships Friendship players put up with on the way to becoming what prep prognosticators have tabbed the top football team in the city. Read it all over again here.

If you can’t root for these kids —-how ’bout those “locker rooms?”—-you can’t root for anybody.

The current editorial plan is to keep you posted on the team’s progress in this space throughout the football season, or at least for as long as they make us look good for jumping on the Friendship bandwagon.

Next stop: The Knights get only three days rest before hitting the road again Thursday for an early-evening tilt at Bowie State against Baltimore’s Mount Saint Joseph, as part of something called the I-95 Kickoff Classic.

Yes, high school squads play Thursdays, too, to accommodate promoters.

Dang, I miss “Friday Night Lights.”