Coaches in Florida just got a lot more tools to work with and it is about time.
Governor Ron DeSantis made it official Friday at Ribault High School in Jacksonville, signing two bills that fix problems that honestly should have been addressed a long time ago.
The first thing people need to understand is that Florida has been losing good coaches to other states because the pay was not competitive enough. SB 538 tackles that directly by allowing booster club money to go toward coach salaries on top of whatever the district is already paying. Schools can also now treat athletic coaches like administrative staff when it comes to negotiating pay, which means more flexibility to keep the right people in place. Charter, private and homeschool students also get access to sports and extracurricular activities under this law, so nobody gets left out.
The second bill is the one with a real story behind it. Teddy Bridgewater went back to his roots and took a coaching job at Miami Northwestern in 2024. Some of his players were coming from tough situations and could not always afford meals or a ride to practice, so Bridgewater handled it out of his own pocket.
The FHSAA looked at the rulebook and suspended him for it. DeSantis called it exactly what it was. “He was using his personal funds to do this. These are people that he was mentoring, and that somehow got him suspended because of the way the rules were written.”
SB 178, the Teddy Bridgewater Act, makes sure that never happens again. Coaches can now use up to $15,000 of their own money per year to cover things like food, transportation and physical therapy for their players as long as the parents are on board. One coach per team and it has to be reported to the FHSAA, but the door is open now.
Democratic Sen. Shevrin Jones who sponsored the bill did not hold back on what it means. “Coaches play a vital role in young athletes’ lives as not just mentors but lifelines. They should never be penalized for stepping up to protect student athletes and prioritizing their well-being.”
What Bridgewater did for those kids was never the problem. The rules were. Now they reflect that.
