Originally Posted by
belme1201
"The Toughest State in College Football" is the title of the thread, I'll leave it at that.
I knew the Big Ten, I think before you did as an Illini, and, as a Chicagoan early on. Notre Dame was the school of choice in the most heavily Catholic city in the US at the time. Since that time I watched both the Big Ten and the Irish slouch their way to mediocrity in their failure to catch up to the type of football now being played. Hopefully that's changing.
I moved to So Fla. just before Schnellenberger took over at the U and mined the barrios for speedy players that could run circles around their bigger opponents. If he needed line backers and FBs he put the larger running backs, safetys, and corners into the weight room to beef up but still emphasizing speed. Linemen he got from the cane fields and citrus orchards, then he taught all of them they're as good as anybody and can win at football and go to school too. Once they started winning championships, FSU and UF caught on and joined the competition for players from previously neglected areas even though, as long as 50 years ago, Miami was playing HS double headers in the Orange Bowl and drawing 40,000+ to important games at a time when Miami had less than a half million people in the Metro area. In the time since Schnellenberger arrived, Florida's universities won 10 National Championships in the following 26 years. I don't think there are any 2 states in the country combined that can make that claim.
For a little emphasis to my previous post, in the game between Central Florida and Rutgers, the player of the game was a linebacker from Miami, not from UCF, but from Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, another Miami boy scored 2 of Rutgers' touchdowns, one on a 65 yard pass play.
While we're at it, when OSU meets Oregon in the Rose Bowl, watch out for Blount the RB, a boy from near here, and Cincinnatti's top receiver with more than 80 receptions lives just 10 minutes down the road from me. just to mention a few off the top of my head.
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