Florida's Governor is taking his gripes about the state's recent college football performance on the road again.
During a speech to a group in Prosperity, South Carolina, Ron DeSantis extolled the current performance of the Florida State University (FSU) Seminoles, framing it was a welcome change from years of mediocrity from the Sunshine State's gridiron programs.
"Clemson has won in football recently. Florida, our state, has struggled in college football recently," DeSantis complained.
"We were the top state for years and years. We've not had anybody compete even to make the playoff until this year," DeSantis added, eliding FSU's loss in the CFB Playoffs after the 2014 season.
DeSantis has given variations of this speech before, lauding the Seminoles' performance, excoriating years of mediocrity among the state's programs before that, and forgetting that FSU made the playoff previously.
"We've actually never had a team in the college football playoff since the playoffs started. Fast forward, rewind, when I was growing up in the '80s and '90s, it was like a Florida team was competing for the national title almost every year," DeSantis recounted during an interview Wednesday on WFEA's Morning Update.
The Governor, who played Division 1 baseball at Yale, has griped about students leaving the state to play college football elsewhere.
"I realized this my first year as Governor. I asked my staff to give me letters of congratulations for all Florida's high school blue-chip football recruits because we've got great high school football in Florida. And I'm signing these letters and it's like, 'Dear Michael, congratulations on going to the University of Georgia. Congratulations on going to Alabama.' And I'm like, why congratulate them for leaving our state?" DeSantis said.
"That didn't used to be what it was."
DeSantis has been even less complimentary about Billy Napier's University of Florida football team, meanwhile, making it clear on numerous occasions that he believes that "their football team (needs) to start doing a little bit better."
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