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DAVIE — Jeremiah Smith’s plan when he got to Ohio State was work hard and see what happens.

“The thought process with us was pretty much get in, get your feet wet, whatever playing time you get, do what you got to do,” Smith’s father, Chris Smith, told the Sun Sentinel. “I guess he had his own mindset, so he went there and did what he needed to do to get him a spot.”

Smith did not just earn a spot on a talented Buckeyes roster. He established himself as a starter, a star and arguably the best player in college football entering his sophomore year.

“It’s been surreal,” Chris Smith said. “You know, the expectation was high, but I knew he could be able to go do what he needed to do. So it’s a surreal moment, but also it’s a grinding moment, too.”

Smith’s success feels almost preordained. He was always among the most talented players in his age group, his seven-on-seven coach, South Florida Express founder Brett Goetz, said.

“Everybody kept talking about this JJ Smith kid,” Goetz said. “I think we were in Houston. … But I finally got to see him, and he was as advertised. He was great. And watching him kind of go up our ladder of seven-on-seven teams, age-wise, and he’s every bit what everybody says.”

Smith starred everywhere he played in South Florida. At Chaminade-Madonna, he racked up 3,043 receiving yards and 45 touchdown catches from his sophomore season through his senior year. He was the Sun Sentinel Broward County small schools offensive player of the year as a senior.

When it came time to pick a college, Smith — who was listed as the top high school player in the nation — stuck with his long-time Ohio State commitment over a push from hometown Miami.

The decision paid off. Smith racked up 1,315 yards and 15 touchdowns as a freshman, helping lead the Buckeyes to a College Football Playoff title.

“He’s just hungry to do it over again,” Chris Smith said.

But all the success has not changed him, Chris Smith and Goetz said.

“He’s still JJ,” Chris Smith said.

Said Goetz: “(He) shakes everybody’s hand, signs everything, takes pictures with every kid. And I saw him a couple weeks ago at Ohio State practice, and all these people came up to him, these kids, and they wanted to have a catch with him. So watching that, and he never said no to anybody. So, I think, he’s handled it really well.”

The elder Smith said his son does not want to come home often, which he takes as a good sign.

“That means you feel at home,” Chris Smith said.

Smith has taken on the role of superstar (being named one of EA Sports’ College Football 26 cover athletes, among other honors), but has not changed who he is.

On the field, the sky remains the limit.

“I’ve seen Amari Cooper, I’ve seen a lot of these great ones come through South Florida,” Goetz said. “And he has a chance to be the best out of all of them. Time will tell. But at this point, he’s unreal.”

He said what you said.

“I believe I could’ve had success elsewhere, but why take that chance?” Sam Bennett asked.

He saw what you saw.

“We really have the chance to make this team a dynasty,’’ he said.

The Florida Panthers center signing an eight-year, $64-million deal makes you ask the next question, too. Who’s next? Brad Marchand? Aaron Ekblad?

These three days before NHL free agency begins with these three players might look like the 12 Days of Christmas by the time the announcements stop. Do the Panthers pull off the triple play?

“It sounds like it’s happening,’’ a hockey agent said Friday night.

This isn’t negotiation as much as mediation, as Panthers general manger Bill Zito has said. The team entered free agency having $19 million to spend and three prime players to spend it on. Bennett, at 29, the Conn Smythe winner as the playoffs’ top performer, is the first guy this team needed back with his mix of fury and finishing.

Now, who’s next?

“This scares the league,” the agent said.

It’s not just the Panthers have eight core players signed for the next five years. It’s that Seth Jones, at 30, is the oldest. Anton Lundell is the youngest at 23. When’s the last time two-time champions had such a developed roster sitting in the prime of their careers?

“This is the core that’s been here for the last three, four years, and we’ve had so much success I don’t see why it can’t continue,’’ Bennett said. “We’re all so committed to the same goal of winning and doing whatever it takes and putting in the hard hours to do what it takes to win.

“It’s really the dream situation. I couldn’t pass up signing for another eight years.”

Sports is full of filthy-rich decisions made that seems just filthy. LIV golfers selling their souls to a Saudi league came with a game-changing odor. The Miami Heat’s Jimmy Butler, signed for $112 million, sabotaging a season over a contract two seasons away.

Then there’s the ongoing saga of Dolphins cornerback Jalen Ramsey. He signed a position-high deal two years ago. He demanded it be redone to make him the highest-paid cornerback last year, and the Dolphins relented. He now wants out of town because something else isn’t right.

Players should get whatever they can, just like you or I should. But is it too much to ask they care about the team in return? Or at least pretend to care?

Bennett got his money. The $8 million is roughly $1 million more than the Panthers were offering a year ago. He also could have gotten more elsewhere, as anyone on the open market usually can. But Bennett’s list of priorities seemed to follow Matthew Tkachuk’s reasoning, when he picked the Panthers a few years ago.

“No. 1, where can I win?” Tkachuk said. “No. 2, where can I make the most money? No. 3 was like, outside of the rink, where was the best place to be? That was pretty obvious. This was the best place to be.”

The Panthers don’t keep everyone. They can’t. Last summer, defensemen Brandon Montour and Oliver Ekman-Larsson and forward Ryan Lomberg signed life-setting contracts elsewhere. Sometimes money wins out.

So, Jones, Nate Schmidt and A.J. Greer filled those spots. Each had career seasons, too. That says something about what’s happening here.

Bennett had five coaches in six Calgary seasons and his career was floundering before coming to the Panthers. Part of that was him, no doubt. Part of his success now is that coach Paul Maurice’s idea of hockey mirrors his physical talents.

“My game didn’t change, but I changed how I looked at the game,’’ he said. “I played a little different style. It helped me so much playing a little harder hockey, more defensive minded.’’

Marchand’s game was rejuvenated, too. At 38 next year, he’d be an outlier on this team. So was the manner he played in the Stanley Cup Final with six goals.

“I told him, ‘We’re following you — you’re leading us,’” Bennett said.

Ekblad, a lifelong Panther, was part of the layered defense that held down Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov, Toronto’s Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner and Edmonton’s Connor McDavid these playoffs.

It’s rare when the front office, coach and players are in harmony like the Panthers — as rare as winning two titles and thinking of more. A dream, as Bennett said. A nightmare for the league, as the agent said.

One big free agent down.

Two to go?

Florida hasn’t had a lieutenant governor for four months. Tell the truth. Have you noticed?

No, you haven’t, and that tells you all you need to know about a position that sounds much more important than it is.

The job is usually so irrelevant that people in politics can’t even be bothered taking the time to say all six syllables, so they just refer to it as “L.G.”

Mike Stocker/Sun SentinelSteve Bousquet, South Florida Sun Sentinel columnist.

Perhaps you didn’t notice: The last L.G., Jeanette Nuñez, resigned in February to become president of Florida International University in Miami.

For six years, Nuñez was a heartbeat away from being governor, but few noticed when she was there, or when she wasn’t there anymore.

It does with the territory. Former Gov. Rick Scott once left the job vacant for 10 months.

The job of lieutenant governor pays $135,516 a year.

The governor lives in a stately official residence with servants. The lieutenant governor gets a little office in the state Capitol and a couple of aides.

The governor gets access to a state plane and round-the-clock security from FDLE. The lieutenant governor gets a Florida Highway Patrol trooper as a driver.

By law, the job description is to become governor “upon vacancy in the office of Governor.”

The last time it happened was in 1998, when Gov. Lawton Chiles died three weeks before he was scheduled to leave office. Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay succeeded him until Jeb Bush was inaugurated on Jan. 5, 1999.

Politico Florida and The Capitolist have reported that the next L.G. might be Jay Collins, who has been a state senator from Tampa since 2022, is married with two young sons, and has been one of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s strongest supporters in the Senate.

He’s a favorite of Florida’s conservative base and has a compelling personal story.

Collins, 49, is a former Army Greet Beret and disabled veteran who had part of his leg amputated and is a Purple Heart recipient. He had a tough childhood. His mother was addicted to drugs and he lived on welfare for a time as a child.

He was part of the recent rescue mission organized by the governor’s office to help people leave Israel for Florida as war broke out with Iran.

Collins is a workhorse in the Senate, and he has the respect of his colleagues.

Surely he’s astute enough to realize that he has a lot more clout as one of 40 senators than he would as lieutenant governor.

But what makes this intriguing is the timing. DeSantis cannot run again, and he wants to find a potential successor to carry on his legacy if his wife Casey doesn’t run for governor.

Despite his short time in office, Collins has expressed interest in running for governor in 2026. In fact, it makes little sense for Collins to take the job if he’s not going to run for governor.

Running won’t be easy: U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds of Naples has President Trump’s endorsement. But nothing is impossible in politics.

The myth persists in Florida that being L.G. is a stepping stone to greater political things, even though history shows the opposite is usually true.

Since 1968, when the office of lieutenant governor was restored, 12 people have held the office. The only one who held it all eight years was Gov. Bob Graham’s L.G., Wayne Mixson, who once threatened to jump ship because Graham gave him so little to do.

Jim Bourdier/APWayne Mixson (right) was Gov. Bob Graham's lieutenant governor from 1979 to 1987.

None of them successfully used the job as a springboard to higher office, and most didn’t try. But long before Nuñez left for FIU, Bush’s first No. 2, Frank Brogan, got the FAU presidency in 2003.

And whether or not you like DeSantis, it’s a good thing he appears to be in good health.

If he were unable to serve, the lack of a lieutenant governor means the next person in the line of succession would be Attorney General James Uthmeier.

Yes, that James Uthmeier, the one who was appointed to the job by DeSantis and who has never been elected by the voters. The one who was held in civil contempt by a federal judge after he continued to enforce an anti-immigrant law that the judge put on hold.

Uthmeier is the same one who came up with the vicious, environmentally reckless “Alligator Alcatraz” as a dehumanizing holding pen for immigrants in the Everglades.

The only thing worse than General Uthmeier would be Governor Uthmeier. That can’t happen.

So it’s obvious: Florida needs a lieutenant governor now more than ever.

Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. You can contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @stevebousquet.