Governor Ron Wants to Pay High School Athletes. But Not At Your School.

By Caesar Campana

Imagine that you live in New Jersey and you have a son who is an amazing football player. Let’s say your son is 6’4” and very fast and he can throw a football 70 yards. How about we call him Gunner? Yeah, a perfect name for this star athlete. Wow.

Even though Gunner is still in high school, you’ve convinced him that he’ll someday play for Notre Dame or maybe even the Georgia Bulldogs. And then of course your wonderchild will play in the NFL where he’ll win a few Super Bowl rings and marry a beautiful Sports Illustrated cover girl.




Think of how much fun it’ll be going to work and bragging about your superstar son. “That’s my boy!” you’ll say. Wow again.

But right now, while he’s still a pimply-faced flame-throwing teenager learning to drive a car and wear deodorant, you find out that Gunner can make some serious cash down here in good ‘ole Florida.

That’s the Sunshine State where the governor, Ron DeSantis, our fearless leader who rules this state with an iron fist while wearing high-heeled boots and often reminds his dedicated followers that his dangling peninsula is where “woke goes to die.” Recently, and this has to do with Gunner, Ronnie and his loyal lawmakers have put out an all-call invitation for big studly teenaged football players to come to his state to make a lot of money.

So (we’re still imagining here) this guy named Jack reaches out to you on Facebook. DMs you how he heard about Gunner’s Tom Brady-like arm. He tells you how Holy Angels Academy, the local high school that Jack supports, “would love to have a good quarterback this year.” Jack goes on to explain how he can arrange housing and employment in his wonderful little town.




Jack’s come-on gets better. “Gunner will receive a $2,000-dollar stipend for each game the Saints (HAA’s mascot) win. On top of that, he will be given a bonus payment of $1,000 for each touchdown pass he throws.” And finally, more exciting than that time Uncle Leo won $535 at the nickel slots in Atlantic City, Jack adds: “If Angel Academy wins the state championship, Gunner will be given the keys to any BMW that I have at my dealership.”

Now you, the reader, at this point are asking: What the hell! Is this real?

To which, I, the writer, will reply. Watch this.

For the sake of argument, for those who don’t know, the NIL (Name Image Likeness) craziness that every old fart with gray hair is screaming about, started two years ago when the NCAA (finally) allowed its college athletes to receive compensation from booster clubs and rich supporters. Millions, if not billions, of dollars are being distributed to thousands of NCAA athletes in all different kinds of sports venues. The two highest paid athletes, Shedeur Sanders (son of Deion), the starting QB at Colorado has a $4.6 million NIL agreement. Livvy Dunne, the world class gymnast at LSU, has a $3.9 million deal.

Arguing about the good and bad, right and wrong of the NCAA’s NIL experiment is not why we’re here, however.




We want to figure out how this crazy NIL idea trickled down from the college ranks to the Florida high school level.

It started with Disney.

Remember when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis became angry when he found out Mickey Mouse was gay (or something like that). Governor D was so upset he removed Walt Disney World’s board of operations in the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the area that controls Disney, and replaced them with a bunch of his political cronies. Well, Ron DeSantis has done the same thing with the Florida High School Athletic Association. He didn’t like how the 100-year-old board was running things, so he fired everyone and installed his own people.

On a personal note: For over forty years, I worked under the regulations of the Florida High School Activities Association as a high school coach. Throughout my career in education, I often contacted the FHSAA board, asking for interpretations involving rules about such issues as referee assignments, student eligibility, and playoff seeding. Back then, the FHSAA board members were former coaches, principals and athletic directors. Every encounter I had with the FHSAA board was professional and fair.

I retired in 2018. Ron DeSantis became governor in 2019. I was a lucky man.

In 2023 DeSantis signed legislation (he called it Let Kids Be Kids) which basically dissolved the historic structure of the FHSAA, replacing the former board with nine new members whom he personally selected. This new board immediately eased eligibility restrictions for athletes who attend virtual schools as well as charter schools. Another (disgusting) ruling gave clearance for pregame prayers to be broadcast before public school athletic events. Cowboy Ron signed this bill at Cambridge Christian in Tampa.

So now Ron rules the high school sports world. And why, you ask, does he want the athletes to get paid? The answer comes with the following question:




Who can pay for a kid to come play for them?

For all of you good people from Flagler County who are reading this commentary, I can absolutely reassure you that there are no boosters, supporters or local merchants involved with Flagler Palm Coast High School and Matanzas High School (our two high schools) who are willing or able to dish out thousands of dollars to an athlete. Hell, I couldn’t get some of them to buy a $50 ad.

But Florida is a big state and I do know of many, many high schools that are supported by people who will love to buy talented athletes. And if you want to know which schools I’m talking about, let me tell you how to find them.

Go to Maxpreps.com and look for the highest ranked high school athletic programs in Florida. The ones who have won many state championships. The ones who are ranked nationally. The ones who have put dozens of graduates into the NFL (and other pro leagues). Let me warn you, however. Most of the powerful programs are not public schools.

Here’s a sampling of the nonpublic schools that are considered the strongest football programs in the state:

• St Thomas Aquinas: 47 NFL players, (10 active) 8 State Championships.
• IMG academy- 15 NFL players- 2 National Championships.
• Trinity Christian Academy (Jacksonville) – 6 State championships.
• American Heritage (Plantation)- 12 NFL players – 5 State Championships.
• Chaminade-Madonna Football – 16 in NFL – 7 State Championships.
• Christopher Columbus (Roman Catholic) High School (Miami, FL) – 16 NFL players.
• Champagnat Catholic – played in 7 state championships.
• Cardinal Gibbons – 3 State championships.

If you want to know how competitive high school football is in Florida remember, there are two levels. The haves and have-nots. The haves are private schools with loads of money. The institutions that can now outright pay to have any athlete they desire. The have-nots are the poor public high schools that count every dollar and have fundraisers selling t-shirts so the athletes can afford to have matching uniforms.




Ron doesn’t give a cowboy-boot-lick about those poor public schools.

So what happened to Gunner, you ask? Here’s what I think.

Gunner had a very brief experience at Holy Angels Academy. In the first game as the starting QB for the Saints, he got wacked in the head real hard— suffered a concussion, had to leave the game. He later said it was a good thing. “Knocked some sense into me.” He and his family returned to New Jersey where Gunner had an average career performing for his old high school. He ended up playing football at tiny Monmouth College. From where he graduated he became a teacher.

Caesar Campana, a Palm Coast resident, was the head football coach at Flagler Palm Coast High School from 2009 to 2014, when he ended a 38-year career in coaching that had started at FPC in 2003. An English teacher, he retired from the school district in 2018 and has authored a half dozen books since, including the novels “The Blood We Truly Bleed” in 2022 and, most recently, “Bright Shiny Objects: The last Faberge Egg,” both set locally. See: “From Head Football Coach at Flagler Palm Coast High School to Prolific Novelist: Caesar Campana’s Afterwords.”