There's hope in Florida, with the state's 7 FBS teams off to a combined 11-3 start

No. 5 Miami, No. 10 Florida State and No. 18 South Florida are all in the AP Top 25. Those three teams are 2-0, as is UCF. The state's seven FBS teams — those four plus Florida Atlantic, FIU and previously ranked Florida — are a combined 11-3. That ties the best start in the 21-year era of the state having this many FBS schools.

What does it mean? Maybe nothing. But it's a good start.

“In modern-day college football, it’s really, really hard to do what these guys are doing right now, which is not listening to anybody outside of our building, trusting their inner circle, believing in their inner circle, and just continuing to be proud of building something,” USF coach Alex Golesh said after the Bulls beat Florida this past weekend. “They continue to tell their story.”

The story might be very different all across the state this year.

Florida State already has matched its win total from last season. Having four state teams off to 2-0 starts, modest as that may be, hadn’t happened since 2016. The 11-3 start matches the state’s best since 2011 and Sunshine State teams already have four wins against AP-ranked opponents; that number will reach at least five this weekend, since Miami and USF are facing each other.

Last year, all season, state schools won a total of two games against AP-ranked teams.

“Any team right now, they talk about wanting to win championships," Florida State coach Mike Norvell said. "They’re talking about wanting to be the best. They’re talking about these great players that they say they want to become. People, they’ll hear you when you talk, but they’ll listen by your actions.”

There was a weekend last November when the state made the wrong kind of history. The seven FBS schools went a combined 0-6 that weekend; everybody lost except FIU, which didn’t play. It was part of a season when the Sunshine State had a combined winning percentage among its FBS teams of .437 — the fourth losing record in the last five years.

Such a notion was unfathomable a generation ago. For 21 consecutive seasons — from 1983, when Miami won its first national championship, through 2003 — the Hurricanes, Florida or Florida State finished the season ranked No. 5 or higher in the final AP poll. They did it a combined 34 times in those 21 seasons.

In the next 21 seasons, it happened only five times.

Things may be changing. Florida, which has seen 92 high school players get picked in the NFL draft over the last three seasons — the most in the country in that span, one more than Texas — looks like it has contenders again.

“There’s so much talent,” FAU coach Zach Kittley said. “I’ve been out here trying to meet every high school coach I can meet to start developing that relationship so I can keep these South Florida recruits in South Florida.”

The hope is real. The potential is there. And the way Miami quarterback Carson Beck sees it, college football is better when college football is good in Florida.

“I think everyone that has played high school football in Florida believes that the best talent comes out of Florida,” said Beck, a Jacksonville native. “I, too, believe that. ... That there is so much talent and that there has been so much success as far as college goes, obviously, I think that’s a really good thing for this state. And it’s a really good thing overall for college football in general.”

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football