A.G. Gancarski
Florida’s Governor is praising the state’s college football programs after an impressive first week of college football and wondering if greater success is still ahead.
Gov. Ron DeSantis says teams in the state are in a “pretty good” position following several significant Week 1 wins. Whether that means squads at the University of Florida, Florida State University, the University of Miami and others close the season strong remains to be seen, but DeSantis said “we’ll see what happens with that.”
“In the whole playoff era, Florida State made it that first playoff year. I mean, that’s probably, what, 10 years ago now. And since then, not one Florida school has even made it to the playoff,” DeSantis said while speaking to press in Orlando.
He recalled that the University of Central Florida was undefeated in 2017, but did not get selected to the tournament that determines the national championship.
DeSantis discussed Florida State managing to “beat Alabama and look good doing it,” noting that people were “cautiously optimistic” but now feel a “huge sense of relief.”
“They just didn’t know what was going to happen, right? You know, two years ago, a great season. Last year was really bad,” DeSantis said.
He also described Miami scoring a “mild upset” against Notre Dame and the University of South Florida’s defeat of Boise State, another ranked program
But he was less impressed by the competition the state’s flagship university bested.
“Obviously, everyone knew the Gators would win against Long Island,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis did say over the weekend that he thought four Florida schools should be in the Top 25, suggesting that he is more impressed with the gridiron performance than he has been at other times.
DeSantis believes that if the mechanism had existed during the heydays of Bobby Bowden, Jimmy Johnson and Steve Spurrier that Florida teams would have dominated, and longed for a time when Florida would “return to being the college football capital of the world like we used to be.”
Perhaps that time is now.
