League News · 2026 Season

The First In-Season Power Rankings Are Out, and the Middle Is a Mess

Daniel Baugh had the Fort Lauderdale Lions ranked 2 before a single race was run. Then the Atlanta Wild beat them. On this week’s Grid and Grind Show, Baugh and guest Jason of Jason Fitness Media ranked all ten Grid League teams for the first time since the season opened, and the Wild came out at 6.

It took them an hour and fifteen minutes to get there, most of it spent arguing about whether beating a good team should count for more than never losing to anyone. They started at 10 and worked up.

How the Board Got Built

Baugh had been putting this off for weeks. He wanted every team to play at least one match, and he wanted more than one team to have run the same match format so the comparisons meant something. He got the first. He never got the second.

A Grid League match is a run of short races between two teams on parallel lanes of a playing surface called the Grid, where barbell stations, rigs, and sprint lanes are stacked into quadrants that get harder the farther down the floor you go. Points pile up race by race, and the closing Sprint Relay works like a fourth quarter. Teams have been running different formats through the opening weeks, so a 20-14 result in one match tells you very little about a one-point finish in another.

Race times are not published, which removes the one number that could compare teams who have never faced each other. “I don’t have race times,” Baugh said, “and even if you did have race times, with challenges and reruns, it’s really hard to quantify some of those.”

So they built the board on two rules. Wins count for more than losses. And if you beat a team, you finish ahead of that team. Everything after that was eye test.

Starting at 10

Neither host argued about the bottom three.

The Carolina Flight sit 10 at 0-1, and the reasoning had nothing to do with effort. One of the league’s two expansion teams was assembled late and got almost no time to train together. They lost 20-14 to the Houston Bandits and controlled long stretches of the back half.

The South Beach Palms take 9 at 0-2 after opening the season ranked 5. Injuries left holes the roster could not cover. Someone from the Palms watching the chat did not fight it. “Bandits was a tough loss. Then we had a bad show against the Sharks. Definitely don’t disagree with you boys.”

The New York Wolves land 8 at 0-1. They lost by five to the Tampa Bay Brigade in the first match in franchise history, and both hosts read that as a good showing rather than a bad result. Baugh had them 9 in the preseason. They moved up a spot by losing.

The Middle, Where It Falls Apart

The Palm Beach Breakers hold 7 without a win. Their only match was a one-point loss to the team that would end up ranked 1, and they played it several players short. That is what produced the rule Jason invented in the middle of the show and then applied to every team after it.

“Until I see a player place a foot on the Grid, I do not consider them a part of your roster.”

Several teams have players who are coming. The Breakers have them. The Lions have them. The Las Vegas Venom put out a call for players to submit video for a shot at the New York event. None of it moved anyone up the board.

The Wild take 6, and this is where the two rules collided. Atlanta beat the Lions, and no other team ranked below 4 has beaten anyone in the top 4. But head-to-head is a rule, the Venom beat the Wild, and so the Venom finish ahead of them at 5 on the strength of a single result.

Josh, a Breakers player watching the live chat, made the argument before either host did. They had the Wild “awfully low,” he wrote, “for having a win over a top four team and a loss to your fifth team.”

The hosts agreed with him. In the closing minutes they moved the Wild up from 7 to 6, which pushed the Breakers down from 6 to 7. Josh plays for the Breakers.

“Why couldn’t they just win both or lose both?” Jason said. “Like, why do that to us?”

The Top of the Board

The Brigade take 4 and the Lions take 3, in that order for exactly one reason. The Lions beat the Brigade head to head.

Then the Bandits at 2, and that is where the two rules started to bite. Houston has not lost. Both of their wins came against the teams ranked 9 and 10.

“The Bandits are in second. That’s insane.”

Both hosts left them there anyway. Houston trailed the Palms and still won by a point, needing a rerun and a bonus flag, which is the Grid League version of a coach’s challenge in football. That match came down to the Sprint Relay. Against the Flight they won 20-14.

That leaves 1, and neither host pretended it was in doubt. The Southwest Florida Sharks are 2-0. They beat the Breakers by a point, they beat the Palms, and they lost several players in the offseason without slowing down. Jason gave it away an hour before they got to it.

“Jason, that was not fun, was it?” Baugh asked when they finished.

“Nobody’s happy,” Jason said. “I’m slightly happy, but nobody’s happy.”

The Full Board

Records are through the opening weeks of the 2026 season.

What the Nor’easter Changes

The next six matches run August 8 and 9 at American Dream in East Rutherford, New Jersey, at the two-day event the league calls the Nor’easter. Eight of the ten teams are on the schedule. The Bandits and the Wild are not, so Houston cannot add a win and cannot take a loss.

Everyone else can move. The Breakers, the team the hosts could not place, draw the Brigade on Saturday and the Palms on Sunday, so they could climb or fall to the bottom inside 24 hours. The Sharks get the Lions and then the Brigade, which Jason flagged as the toughest draw of the weekend. The Wolves, ranked 8, get the Flight and then the Venom. Win both and a first-year team is 2-1.

Watch the Full Episode

Up Next

Tickets for both days of the Nor’easter are on sale now.

Have a question? Email us at staff@unitedgridleague.com