I have to say right off the bat that I am a huge Football and Basketball fan. I watch College Game Day every Saturday so I can keep up on the state of College Football around the entire country. I also bleed Wisconsin Red. That is the college team that I follow the closest. When they win I am elated and when they lose I am always crushed. I am no different than much of the nation on Saturday. I am so glad that when College Football is winding down that College Basketball is just starting to ramp up so I can root for my teams and enjoy the distraction that they bring to my life.

 

Like much of the College Sports World I was interested in which four teams were going to be playing for the National Championship. I knew that Michigan would be in and I knew that Washington would be in. I figured that the SEC champ whether it was Alabama or Georgia would get in because of the perception that the SEC is the strongest conference in the country. I wasn’t sure if it would be Texas or Florida State. Florida State was the ACC champions and Texas was the Big 12 Champions. Florida State was undefeated and Texas had one loss. You would have thought that the undefeated Florida State team would get in but the selection committee thought that because of the strength of schedule they selected Texas. Well I live in Florida and you would think that the world was coming to an end. I thought that Florida State should have been selected and Alabama or Texas not be selected but then I am not making the choice. One thing I do know is that the World is not coming to an end because of who was invited and who wasn’t invited to the so call National Championship.

Now we have a lot of problems in Florida. The cost of Car Insurance is double the national average. Home owners insurance is out pacing the national average by four times. The State is a bureaucratic mess when it comes to permitting and obtaining the permits. We have a labor shortage and we have a housing shortage. All of these things affect our State a lot more than Florida State not going to the College Playoffs What do I read in the headlines today? Governor DeSantis is allocating One Million Dollars to sue the NCAA for the snub of Florida State. This is just another publicity stunt to try and bolster his image. He did something earlier in his quest for the Presidency when he chartered a plane to bring Immigrants from Texas to Florida so he could deport them from Florida to Massachusetts. Sometimes the truth is more bizarre than the fiction and DeSantis is a bizarre man. 

Margaretville is having their grand opening on Ft. Myers Beach which is a good thing but it does not mean that Ft. Myers Beach’s recovery is even close to being done. All you have to do is drive down Estero Boulevard and you would see that probably only about 10 percent that is complete. There are structures that still have to come down. Sanibel Island is in the same boat and so is much of Pine Island. I don’t see our Governor trying to fix the real problems that plague the State of Florida. Florida State not going to the National Championship is not one of those problems. Maybe, just maybe, if the Governor wasn’t putting legal immigrants onto planes and instead, letting them work here our recovery would be going a lot better. Maybe helping streamline all the bureaucracy with the permitting and the inspections would help. A State that claims that they don’t like government they sure have a lot of governmental rules that I think is slowing up the work that needs to be done.

In Florida we ban books which some are actual classics. One of the great sculptures of all time, Michael Angelo’s sculpture of David, is considered pornography. Our Governor claims that there is no value in Black History. We are a State that is dependent on tourism and the diverse groups of people that tourism attracts but we won’t let people be trained in diversity to handle people. Our free speech is under attack in Education and in Government. Our beautiful nature and environment is what attracts hundreds of thousands of people to enjoy our beaches and Islands that surround the State. Fishing, swimming and boats are just a few of the activities that attract people to our beautiful State yet we continue to vote for people that deny the changes on our climate that are ruining our natural beauty. They deny that Climate Change is real and that Man is playing a huge part in it. Our waters are rising and the storms are getting stronger but in Florida our governor just buries his head in the sand and ignores the facts. 

Yes, we have lots of problems in Florida but one of them is not that Florida State did not get into the National Championship. I would have loved it if they did, but they didn’t, and we have to move on. They will just have to settle for the Orange Bowl which is a pretty big deal in its own right. Education, Climate Change, Insurance, Employment, Housing, Bigotry and Violence are the real problems that are either made worse or just ignored by our Elected Officials. Throwing away our money for political points just makes it worse.