Last year the Sporting News named the University of Florida football fans the top college crowd in the nation and ranked their 90,000-seat Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at Florida Field in Gainesville as the nation's loudest.

A $10 million state economic stimulus plan created by Gov. Charlie Crist has generated just 45 new jobs in its unfinished first year.

Last January, as he announced the Economic Gardening Business Loan Program, the governor expressed confidence it would produce “a large number of new sustainable jobs” while planting the seeds “that our homegrown businesses need to flourish.”

A recent Wall Street Journal headline, "Builders See Returning Florida Market," sounded a positive note for the state's long-languishing real estate sector.

The Sanford-datelined story was pegged on a single statistic: a 70 percent year-over-year increase in construction starts for single-family homes in the Orlando area.