Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to offer criticisms of the Sunshine State’s sports culture.
This time around, he took issue with college football in the state, saying the Georgia Bulldogs and the Alabama Crimson Tide were better than the teams in Florida.
The Governor started off by flexing on the Florida Gators’ performance in the Florida-Georgia football game.
“I will say as somebody who was born and raised in Florida, the Florida-Georgia game was a little easier lift for us back in the day than it is now. And you Georgians know what I mean,” said DeSantis, an alum of Yale University and Harvard Law School.
“So, congratulations on all the success,” DeSantis added. “We’ve done better on almost everything policy-wise. I can point out many things. College football has not necessarily been one of them. So we’re trying to turn the corner.”
The Governor, who played college baseball in the Ivy League, remarked on the irony of congratulating recruits headed out of state to play football.
“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.”
“So, anyways, Florida-Georgia game, you know, let’s just say I’m going to be, you know, cheering as the Governor, but I am not going to be putting any money on the Gators this year,” DeSantis added.
These comments were offered at “The Gathering,” hosted by friendly conservative commentator Erick Erickson in Atlanta.
This is the second time in recent days he held up other states’ sports cultures as superior to Florida’s. Just days ago, he denigrated the passion of Florida sports fans compared to “Red Sox Nation,” as he remembered it from his Harvard Law days, even as he described Florida’s “great” college football in that instance.
“And that was unlike anything I’ve seen in Florida because, you know, the Bucs have won a couple of Super Bowls. We’ve had other teams do well. We’ve had a lot of great college football and people get excited, don’t get me wrong, but this was just in the bloodstream in New England. And I’ve never seen so many people be so revved up and when they won it, it was like such a big deal,” he said during a Tuesday interview on Boston’s WBZ.
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