The Michigan Wolverines won the 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship. You can thank Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy graduated high school from IMG Academy, the Florida prep school known for producing NFL talent. But McCarthy was born and raised in La Grange Park, Illinois. Before IMG, he played for three years at local Nazareth Academy. So how does a top QB recruit already playing for an elite prep high school football team in his own backyard end up transferring to another prep school 1,220 miles away?
COVID lockdowns. Or, more specifically, the lack of COVID lockdowns in lockdown-free Florida.
McCarthy’s 2020-21 season was not going to happen in Illinois, where Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker had high school sports (and much of everything else) on lockdown. Florida had no such lockdowns, however, and IMG Academy played a normal fall season with an eight-game schedule. By the time Nazareth started its shortened four-game season in the spring of 2021, McCarthy had already been on Michigan’s campus for two months.
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That made a big difference. McCarthy’s development would have been severely stunted by taking a year off from football, especially as a quarterback. A lockdown fall season at home where he would end up having to skip a short four-game season in the spring to get his head start at Michigan would have changed his entire career trajectory. In the world where McCarthy stays in Pritzker’s Illinois, Michigan probably doesn’t win the national championship after all.
This Michigan championship is yet another consequence of decisions made during COVID, both the good (Florida staying open) and the bad (Illinois staying locked down). It would make a great ad for DeSantis to run in Michigan in a general election, so long as no one in Ohio hears about it.
