In today's college football, everyone recruits South Florida.

Long gone are the days where the best players from the area almost always choose to go to one of the in-state schools. Nowadays, premier programs regularly try to pull prospects from the area -- which is a hotbed for all talent, but especially receivers and defensive backs -- out of state while non-premier programs try to find South-Florida diamonds in the rough that aren't heavily recruited by the top-tier programs.

Because everyone recruits South Florida, all coaches have at least a degree of familiarity and ties to the area through previous recruitments of prospects from the area, coaching connections or other means.

However, you can certainly make the case that Mike Norvell's first FSU staff didn't have enough ties to the area. He did retain two FSU alums in wide receivers coach Ron Dugans and defensive tackles coach Odell Haggins, but the new members of the staff didn't have the most direct of SoFla ties.

Norvell's 2020 transitional class and his first full class in 2021 weren't particularly full of prospects from south of Tampa. Each class had only a few signees from South Florida.

Safe to say that has changed over the last few staff changes the Seminoles have made.

First was the hire of senior defensive analyst Greg Moss in February 2022. A former coach at Miami Carol City, Miramar and Nova High, as well as at FIU, Moss' South Florida ties run deep.

Then Norvell brought on Pat Surtain Sr. as FSU's new defensive backs coach when Marcus Woodson moved onto Arkansas.

After an 11-year NFL career, Surtain was a coach at Plantation (Fla.) American Heritage High School from 2013-2021, including a stint as head coach from 2016-2021.

Their impacts, especially Surtain's in the secondary, has ramped up FSU's South Florida recruiting over the last few years. The last two classes alone, FSU has signed 13 high-school recruits from south of Tampa.

Two more additions to the staff this offseason have only further deepened those SoFla bonds on the Seminoles' staff.

New FSU safeties coach Evan Cooper played his high-school ball at American Heritage and spent two seasons as DBs coach at Westminister Academy in Fort Lauderdale in 2011 and 2012.

"South Florida guys, Florida guys in general love football," Cooper said. "The entire country puts an emphasis on Florida recruiting in general. It's good to have that in our backyard."

New FSU wide receivers coach/pass game coordinator Tim Harris Jr. has perhaps the largest South Florida ties of anyone on the Seminoles' staff.

A native of Miami and UM Sports Hall of Fame sprinter for the Hurricanes, Harris was the offensive coordinator at Miami Booker T. Washington High from 2009 through 2013, winning a pair of state titles while working alongside his father, Tim Harris Sr., who was the head coach.

Harris then led Booker T. Washington to an undefeated season and another state title in his lone season as head coach before he was on FIU's staff from 2015 through 2020, at UCF in 2021, 2022 and 2024 and at Miami in 2023.

Essentially, his entire 15-year football coaching career has been at Florida high schools and universities. His dad is still head coach at Booker T. Washington, returning for his fourth stint there in 2022.

"Florida State is an attractive destination, I don't care where you're from. South Florida, North Florida, out of state, Florida State speaks for itself," Harris said. "When you're talking from a South Florida standpoint, it's always good when you have guys on the staff with those relationships down there. Because you want to know the people that you need to talk, you want to have the relationships with the right people that they're going to trust being able to leave South Florida to come all the way to North Florida. They're passing some other schools in our state that are probably trying to get them, too.

"When we've got relationships here like myself, Pat, Evan and some of our off-the-field coaches, it's a really big advantage for us. We're going to make sure that we do all we can to be aggressive and play to those advantages."

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