Listen Now! Spring football in Florida is here. Jon Santucci tells you what you need to know
The state of Florida has more than 500 high school football teams.
According to data culled from saturdaydownsouth.com, Florida ranks fifth in the nation with 40,606 high school football players.
If you’re wondering, Illinois, California, Texas and Ohio have more.
Nonetheless, that’s a lot of football players.
According to the same website, Florida has the highest percentage of players who go on to play in the FBS in college. The Sunshine State ranks second overall in number of players heading to the FBS.
In other words, that’s a lot of players to keep up with.
With spring football under way and spring games occurring in the coming days and weeks, many of those young men have their eyes on being the next players from the state to head to college to play football.
Some are already on college radars, with offers and commitments made throughout the state.
Others will break through this year, going from unknown to a sought after commodity.
It’s a hard job keeping track of them.
But one person does as good a job as anybody in keeping tabs on all of them, and that’s Jon Santucci, the USA Today State of Florida high school sports and recruiting reporter.
Jon travels the state and studies the players to help bring the most pertinent information to fans around the state.
On this week’s “The State of Florida Sports Podcast,” join returns to talk about all things high school football related. With a smattering of college football, as well.
Jon will tell us which schools will be among the best in the state in 2024.
He’ll talk about changes made by the FHSAA to the classifications around the state. Metro and Suburban classifications are going away in favor of school-size classifications, the way things were before the prior two years.
"When you when you see a team like Chaminade Madonna being the No. 2 team in the nation and they're in the smallest classification in Florida, then clearly your enrollment doesn't matter," Jon says during the podcast. "Miami Central a couple of years ago won one of the national championships in the country, they were in a smaller class. So clearly enrollment size should not be a factor when you're one of the best teams in the country."
He’ll talk about the three letters that have everyone around the state a bit scared — and confused: NIL.
"I don't have a problem with it," he said. "You know, we live in a in a free market, and we're getting it for college players."
And he’ll talk about recent recruiting classes of the state’s big college football programs, as well as some state players who were selected in the recent NFL Draft.
That and much more.
If you love high school football, then you have to listen to this podcast.
Find out why so many fans have checked us out and why our guests and journalists give you the best sports breakdowns in the state.
And hear why feedspot.com ranked us the No. 1 sports podcast in the state of Florida.
We can be downloaded wherever you listen to podcasts, or simply type in “The State of Florida Sports Podcast” into your favorite search engine. We also can be found on any of the 17 USA TODAY-Network Florida websites.
If you like it, you can check out previous shows, which feature current and former professional athletes and coaches, as well as our stable of journalists who cover beats and write columns, all of whom have a tie to the Sunshine State.
Walters can be reached at twalters@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Podcast looks at spring football 2024 in the state of Florida
