AFM Home | Back Issues | Oct 2004 | Sunshine State of Mind

The state of Florida produces over 80 percent of the United States’ supply of citrus. Every year, the Sunshine State sells roughly $4 billion worth of oranges, tangerines, pineapples and other goods grown within its borders. About $3.5 billion worth of orange juice is exported from Florida to the rest of the country – and world – every year.

As dominant as the citrus business is in the state of Florida, the Sunshine State has another heavily coveted export – high school football players. For decades, the state has provided players to Division I-A programs throughout the country, so much so that many once abandoned their own state’s recruits to focus on acquiring even second-tier Florida players.

Prep stars might not be able to compete with orange juice as Florida’s top export, but they’re close.

Early days

It used to be that Florida was a fairly easy state to infiltrate. As recently as 10 years ago, high school recruits had three options when it came to in-state colleges – Florida, Florida State and Miami. And because the ‘Big Three,’ as they’re known throughout the state, have been dominant powers for a generation, many high school players simply couldn’t meet such high standards.

There were no mid-sized Division I-A programs in the state, so only the most blue-chip of recruits could stay in the state, where they’d play for Florida, Florida State or Miami. Everyone else with Division I aspirations had to go outside the state’s borders.

Florida was – and in many ways, still is – limited in the quality and number of Division I-AA, II and III programs, especially when you consider the otherwise sparkling reputation of football in the state. That meant that even marginal prospects had to leave the state to play the sport.

When he started The Forbes Report – an independent service that provides scouting reports on underclassmen and has been used by 107 of the 117 Division I-A programs – in 1988, Terry Forbes found a state that didn’t offer much outside of the ‘Big Three.’

“When we started, there wasn’t even a Jacksonville (University),” Forbes said. “There weren’t many I-AA or D-2 or D-3 schools. If you wanted to play, you had to leave.” That has changed.

Four join the fray

The University of Central Florida, located in Orlando, became a full-fledged Division I-A member in 1996, just in time for its quarterback to set the world on fire.

Daunte Culpepper began his career as a Golden Knight in 1995, starting as a freshman. In 1996, UCF moved up to Division I-A, growing at the same impressive rate as its strong-armed, athletic quarterback. By 1998, Culpepper had become a household name for college football fans, finishing sixth in Heisman Trophy balloting. His senior season, Culpepper completed 296-of-402 passes for 3,690 yards and 28 touchdowns, and was drafted with the 11th overall pick by the Minnesota Vikings.

It was the biggest splash made by a Florida football program not in the ‘Big Three.’ Other universities in the state took notice.

In 2001, the University of South Florida took its program to the Division I-A level. In the three years since, the Bulls have moved into Raymond James Stadium – home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – and appeared numerous times on national television. Thirteen USF alums have played in the NFL – including kicker Martin Gramatica – and three have won Super Bowl rings.

Both programs were met with enough success to be considered valuable to the new alignment of power football conferences. Starting next football season, USF will play in the Big East and have a shot at an automatic Bowl Championship Series bid. At the same time, UCF will move into Conference USA, joining Tulsa, Rice, Southern Methodist and Marshall as newcomers.

Meanwhile, two upstart programs have emerged in Southern Florida. Florida Atlantic University, located in Boca Raton, started playing I-AA football in 2001. Florida International, in Miami, began football in 2002. Bolstered by both programs’ successes at the I-AA level and the rearrangement of Division I-A conferences, the two schools became provisional Division I-A members this year, and will join the Sun Belt Conference. FIU became the fastest school to ever make the leap from inception to Division I-A.

The changes brought by these four schools in the past eight seasons figures to have an impact on the high school recruiting scene in years to come. It will not affect those schools within the state of Florida, but teams nationwide that have built programs with Florida exports.

No one seems to be quite sure how much impact these schools will have on recruiting in the immediate future, but one thing is clear – the days of Florida as America’s untapped college football resource are just about over.

Home-field advantage

Regardless of school size, one factor all of the above have over programs from out-of-state is, well, they’re not out-of-state.

Offering players the option of staying home is simply something that has never been done before in the state of Florida outside of the ‘Big Three.’

Howard Schnellenberger, who has headed programs at Miami, Louisville and Oklahoma, thinks this plays as a huge advantage for his FAU team. He’s hoping that players will choose to come to play for the Owls because of its proximity to their family and friends.

“The establishment of the new football programs in the state of Florida has given hundreds of kids options, opportunities they haven’t had before,” Schnellenberger said. “If we find there’s a large group who’s preference is to stay close to home.”

“We have fewer programs – I’m talking all divisions of football – than almost every other state in the union. We don’t have many community colleges playing. The schools that are playing football are the ones that are popular in the paper.”

Schnellenberger has been on both sides of the issue. While coaching Louisville, about 70 percent of his players came from Florida. As the head coach at Miami, Schnellenberger touted his Hurricanes as the only local option for South Florida players whose families didn’t want to drive to the nearest “Big Three” school in Gainesville.

“Parents wouldn’t have to drive half a day to see their kids play,” he said. “The same thing’s happening now with USF, UCF, FIU and FAU. They’re giving kids an opportunity to play football close to home.”

Forbes feels the in-state schools have a better chance of recruiting in the smaller, more out-of-the-way towns in Florida because out-of-state teams might not have the time or resources to get there.

“More guys in rural areas of Florida could end up at those schools – places it’s tough to fly in and out of,” Forbes said. “The number (of players a team gets from a state) often times has to do with the regionality of it.”

Don Strock, who was a quarterback for the Miami Dolphins and is now the coach at FIU, said he’s found that players prefer to play near home, even though players in the past were not always given that option.

“A lot of them want to stay home and play in front of family and friends, and we give them that opportunity,” Strock said. “They used to have to go out of town; now that’s changed.”

An opportunity to play immediately also helps sell the new programs to players who might otherwise have to take a redshirt year at a bigger school out-of-state.

“We can offer them opportunity – some of them can play for us sooner,” said USF coach Jim Leavitt. “But we’re always going to recruit close to home. I think I’ve got a better shot there.”

Staying home isn’t always going to be the deal-breaker, said Jamie DeMoney, who tracks Kansas City and Texas, among others, for The Forbes Report and is a regular contributor to American Football Monthly.

“If Florida, Miami and Florida State haven’t offered you a scholarship, but maybe Iowa and Boston College has, that’s an easier call,” he said. “That’s still, in most cases, a good deal. Playing at home (to play for USF, UCF, FIU or FAU) isn’t enough to close the deal.”

At least in the short term, that might be the case, although USF and UCF are much farther along in building a national force than FIU or FAU. Regardless, all four schools have a tremendous advantage in that they happened to be placed strategically in the state. The four schools are in three most heavily-populated areas in the state – FIU and FAU are in the Miami area, USF is in Tampa and UCF is in Orlando.

That means that not only do the four schools have an advantage because they are in Florida, but they also have an inside edge on the larger cities themselves. In some cases, campus can be an hour’s drive from the suburbs, which gives players a little distance from home.

“There are a lot of opportunities for us,” Strock said. “We concentrate in Miami-Dade and Broward County. It’s far enough to drive to get here and it’s close enough for holidays.

“They get to grow up on their own by going to college. And making the move to 1-A has definitely changed the atmosphere.”

A different slice

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Florida’s natural resource of football players will dry up. There are enough players to go around. “I figure there are about 300 kids here good enough to play Division 1-A football,” Schnellenberger said. “And there’s only going to be more of them produced.

“There’s some left over for those carpet-baggers.”

Theoretically, the new Division I-A schools will not eat the entire pie of players who could play out-of-state – there are simply too many recruits. If Florida, Florida State, Miami, FIU, FAU, UCF and USF each take 20 in-state players per season, that still leaves at least another 160 or so – not counting ineligible players – who are ready for export to the outside world.

The only thing that is certain to change is the slice of pie that the out-of-state teams can get.

“Any time in Florida, you can see the Pete Carrolls, Lloyd Carrs and Phil Fulmers of the world at a football game,” Strock said, “And they’re not just here on vacation.”

Those major programs don’t figure to be too greatly affected by the new schools, at least not until they prove to be a major force, said The Forbes Report’s DeMoney.

“What Florida did, was it really became an important place for just about any other Division I team in the country to go down and recruit, with the possible exception of some of the Pac-10 schools and teams in Texas,” he said. “Big Ten, Big East, some of the independents – really any of the schools east of the Mississippi – have had Florida as a very important part of recruiting.

“That’s not going to change – the competition is just going to be greater.”

More likely, it will be the smaller Division I schools that might feel the brunt of the new schools’ growing influence. Those schools were never able to compete with the ‘Big Three’ for a recruit; now they’ll have to compete with USF or UCF for the second-tier player.

“If you look at a school like a Western Michigan or Northern Illinois,” DeMoney said, “or people who recruit lots of players from Florida to fill out recruiting classes because they know the quality of second-tier players are greater, it will affect them. They’ll have to compete with a fellow D-I school for players who will be just as happy to stay closer to home.”

“There might not be such a trickle-down effect for smaller-division schools,” said Alvin Wyatt, coach for Division I-AA Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach.

“It’s better for us with all of them being I-A,” he said. “The state of Florida is one of the most talented states in the country, and there’s plenty to go around. We will try to go head-to-head with FAU and FIU. It’s going to be tough for us to get into competition with UCF and USF.”

Coming from out of state, Mark Hudspeth knows he might be otherwise be at a disadvantage. But coaching for Division II North Alabama, he will continue to do what he’s always done, especially because of the lack of small-college programs in Florida.

“We’re trying to recruit Division I players who either fell through the cracks or couldn’t get eligible,” he said. “There are a lot of good players in Florida. Even with the emergence of those schools, they can’t sign them all.

“But there are a lot of schools between Florida and the schools up north that want to recruit these kids in Florida,” he said. “It would be hard to come into the state from far away and get someone.”

What now?

The best way for out-of-state schools to compete with teams that have the home-field advantage in Florida is the old-fashioned way - relationships.

In some cases, assistants from out-of-state schools might have relationships with coaches that predate the newer programs. It is that kind of networking that will enable out-of-state programs to try to get a bigger piece of the Florida recruiting pie.

“You would hope that a relationship between us and a high school coach would hold over,” said John Lilly, the recruiting coordinator at Florida State. “I really believe that most high school coaches – and us, too – want what’s best for their players, regardless of friendships. They want what the young man wants.” Lilly said that there are enough players to go around, and that the state of Florida is an ideal place for out-of-state teams to recruit.

“We’ve sat there and thought, ‘That’s a whole bunch of kids going somewhere else,’” he said. “We have good recruits here who leave the state all the time – sometimes we just miss them.

“Florida gives you a proven recruiting base. In Florida, you get athletes that are well-coached and they understand the enthusiasm that surrounds football in this state.”

Hudspeth said his staff will stick to their shoe-leather recruiting, sending coaches to the northern part of the state in search of talent.

“ You definitely want to develop relationships with high school coaches in the area,” he said. “That’s key if you want to get the players you want, regardless of what school you are.

“To give a kid a chance to stay in-state has to be an advantage. But every kid’s different; they don’t mind traveling if they think they’re going to a good school.”

DeMoney said that the new schools haven’t changed recruiting in Florida; they’ve just made it slightly more difficult for out-of-state programs to get the players they want.

“You get the most bang for your buck there,” he said. “Texas and California have more players signed, but they’re vastly larger states.

“ A lot of it is relationships with high school coaches. If you’re a recruiting coordinator at a MAC school and you’ve been going there for 10 years, the relationship with a high school coach hasn’t changed. The competition’s just higher.

“That’s not to stay there aren’t going to be schools that don’t scale back their efforts. If I’m starting a brand-new program without ties to Florida, I might not go down there right now.”

The Only Thing

What will ultimately decide the success of the new Florida schools to recruit – and the new difficulty of out-of-state teams to fight for the same recruits – will be the success of the new schools. Winning will breed excitement about the programs in the cities the schools are in – which are also their major recruiting bases. It will also help to create young players that have grown up as fans of the program. One day, if done right, youngsters in Florida will grow up wanting to play for USF, UCF, FIU and FAU.

“Until they translate them into victories,” DeMoney said, “being close to home is only going to take them so far.”

Of the four new schools, USF has had the most success at the Division I level. The Bulls finished 7-4 last season and 5-3 in Conference USA. The year before, the Bulls were 9-2.

“I see no reason for us not to go after the best right now,” Leavitt said.

The Bulls are the closest to emerging as a major college power, but there’s no doubt that the other three schools are sleeping giants, some farther away from immediate success than others.

“You need to win,” Lilly said. “It’s going to take a lot of work, and I know those guys work hard. It’s definitely going to be tougher on us at Florida State at some point down the road. Believe me, it’s hard enough to recruit against the other two big schools as it is. We’re just hoping their recruiting will be more to the detriment out-of-state, not to us.

“Can they ever get in with what people call the ‘Big Three?’ I think the day could very easily come when people throw them in the mix with the three big schools.”

Staying In-State

If the state of Florida is one of the Meccas of high school football, then the four newest Division I programs have heaven in their own backyard.

But there is a downside to focusing most of your recruiting efforts on in-state players, especially when many of those players are coming from a 100-mile radius. Don Strock knows that there are pitfalls, and he's ready to tackle them at Florida International University. Strock recruits players from the greater Miami area to his program, which is in Miami.

“When you recruit someone here, you also recruit their friends and family and other things they have going on in their life,” he said. “That's always a concern.”

Strock said the best way to keep players away from those distractions is to keep them busy.

“We study the backgrounds of the kids – we do the best we can,” he said. “They're really isolated. There's not a whole lot of time to be out and about.”

Any program that recruits so close to home can run into the danger of making too many promises to local high school coaches, said Jamie DeMoney, who tracks Kansas City and Texas for The Forbes Report, an independent service that provides scouting reports on underclassmen for college football programs.

“Coaches should always be careful about not offering too many scholarships,” DeMoney said. “Just because they have a plethora of talent in their backyard, they're going to have to work harder to evaluate. It'll be easy to promise the world to high school coaches.”

As for out-of-state schools, recruiting in Florida is a matter of time investment versus reward.

“You've got a finite amount of time,” DeMoney said. “Do you spend the high percentage of time locking up your borders, or do you work harder finding hidden gems that might be considered second-tier by most? Ideally, you want a mixture.”

With so many good players near them, Florida State knows how to pick its battles when it comes to out-of-state players. That’s key when determining where a coach should spend his time recruiting,” said John Lilly, recruiting coordinator for the Seminoles.

“You have to do some smart things,” he said. “You need to ask yourself if the kid you're recruiting wants to stay in-state or if he wants to go. A large percentage of most kids in most states want to stay home. We'll go get a kid from out of state if we think he's a difference maker.”

A Lure to the BCS

In the current state of college football, there are factors to recruiting that lure a player to a certain school. In a time when the Bowl Championship Series is the holy grail of football programs, being aligned with a BCS conference is a major lure to high school players.

In the state of Florida, that sets the University of South Florida apart. Next season, USF will compete in the Big East, whose champion currently earns a BCS berth.

That gives coach Jim Leavitt a huge advantage over Central Florida, Florida International and Florida Atlantic, three of the newest Division I programs in the state.

“What I've seen is that players can go outside the state – they’ll go anywhere – because it's their aspiration to win a national championship,” said John Lilly, recruiting coordinator at Florida State. “To a teenager who doesn't do much research, they might look at the MAC as just a conference without BCS ties. But I'll tell you something, I wouldn't want to mess with the MAC right now.

“Being in a more marquee conference helps recruiting, definitely. There are opportunities in conferences – facilities, bowl games, and BCS berths, and recruits care about that.”

USF also has the advantage of a new, major-college practice facility, another factor players consider when looking at a school. The team moved into the USF Athletics Training Complex, a 104,000 square-foot, $15 million facility, in early July.

All these factors - combined with the fact that USF already plays at Raymond James Stadium, the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has elevated the Bulls to an elite level, in terms of facilities, conference affiliation and a chance at a BCS game.

“It will probably take both the new schools (FIU and FAU) a little time to do it,” said Terry Forbes, founder of The Forbes Report, an independent recruiting publication subscribed to by most Division I-A programs. “But South Florida is now a bona fide school.”

FAU will move into its new domed stadium by 2007, said coach Howard Schellenberger. The building will hold basketball, volleyball, and indoor track.

“Like the Carrier Dome (at Syracuse),” Schnellenberger said, “but the new and improved edition.”

UCF has already received its share of national attention, but that happened six years ago when quarterback Daunte Culpepper put the school on the football map.

“They got a lot of T.V. exposure,” Lilly said. “But it comes down to, can you beat a big school on a recruit? Can you beat them on the field?”

“The key to making the next recruiting step for any of the four programs – regardless of their facilities or conference affiliation – will be when a school gets its first true blue-chip prospect,” said Jamie DeMoney, who works for The Forbes Report.

“What it's going to take is for one of these kids who has offers from Miami or FSU to commit early on and then help recruit other guys to that school,” DeMoney said. “It'll show other kids that they have something special. The key to a good class would be to try to get that one player and have him try to recruit the rest of the class.”

Now that the new schools in Florida have laid the foundation – both literally and figuratively – they are a few great recruits away from changing the way the world thinks about the state outside of the 'Big Three.'

“We're so blessed, all of us, that we have student-athletes that can qualify and compete at a high level right in our backyard,” Lilly said.

Strock said that while the first few years “might be tough,” he is looking at building his program into a national power, no matter how long it takes.

“If you're not on the screen,” Strock said, “you're out of the picture.”