Opinion Archive

This will be the first year where Florida residents are legally – and I stress legally (meaning not using offshore sports books) – allowed to bet on the entire college football and NFL seasons.

Anyone who has read my columns in the past knows I’m not the biggest fan of the Florida High School Athletic Association.


I’ve been critical. A lot. But when it comes to the FHSAA being at fault for the chaos that has ensued with high school athletes transferring, you are looking in the wrong direction. Look over to Tallahassee instead.

Over the course of life – but especially in childhood – we all make mistakes that we learn from and know never to do again.

I’ve worked in three different states during my journalism career, covering education in all of them.

My wife and I had houseguests not long ago, decades-old friends from southeast Florida that we had not seen in years. Our friends had never been to this part of Florida, so a significant part of our “catching up” conversation was dedicated to describing what life is like here on the Florida panhandle.

In case you haven’t heard, Brandon Sproat could be playing Major League Baseball before the 2024 season is over.


Sproat is a fast-rising star in the New York Mets organization and has shown time and again that he has what it takes to play at the highest level of pro baseball.

There have been very few times in my life where the world has stopped and everything else has seemed to matter so much less.

Thursday, Aug. 1 was one of those days.

I have noticed a recent trend – well, a trend I call recent because I just noticed it – people thanking the universe. I first heard it a few years ago from the lips of an acquaintance, who had just come through a very dark period of depression. He emerged thanking the universe for his recovery. My initial, unspoken reaction was, “I wonder where he got that notion?” Since then, I have noticed an uptick in the number of people, celebrity and average Joe alike, thanking the universe.

We spent Monday morning at various schools around Santa Rosa County, taking in the sights and sounds as students walked into classrooms for the first day of the 2024-2025 school year.

Dear Santa Rosa County School District, I saw some pictures of Pine Forest’s new track and it looks beautiful.


It’s a rubberized track that will be ready to go for the spring. I wish we could say the same for schools in this county when it comes to tracks in the area.