During presidential election season, Florida is a swing state. If a candidate wins the Sunshine State, their chances of winning a national election increase.

In recruiting season in college football, the state of Florida is just as important. For years, the state — specifically the most southern part of the state — has been bursting with elite-level football talent. Every SEC school, not to mention schools from the ACC and around the country, want to get their hands on that talent.

In that vein, it’s no surprise that SEC teams are doing what they can to open up a recruiting pipeline to the talent-rich region. While the majority of SEC schools are at least somewhat proximate to the state, being close isn’t good enough.

That would help explain the infatuation with hiring coaches with experience in Florida. As it stands now, 11 of the SEC’s 14 teams have at least one coach on staff who has worked in the college ranks somewhere in Florida. The only schools that don’t have a Florida veteran on their staff shouldn’t be surprising: Texas A&M and Missouri, both of which moved from the midwest-heavy Big 12 in 2012, and Vanderbilt.

Several of those coaches, like Jeremy Pruitt at Georgia, have spent time at Florida State, a school that has long taken advantage of South Florida recruiting.

Other schools have brought on coaches with direct ties to the southern parts of the state. Mario Cristobal, while an excellent offensive line coach with experience as the head of a program, just as importantly serves as Alabama’s recruiting catalyst. It’s no coincidence that he has experience at two Miami-area programs: Miami (Fla.) and Florida International, where he was head coach.

When Bret Bielema took the job at Arkansas, he followed the same tactic, hiring former Hurricanes head coach Randy Shannon to help head up recruiting efforts. When Shannon was hired away by Jim McElwain and the Gators over the winter, as Florida attempts to re-establish recruiting dominance in its home state, Bielema looked to another South Florida veteran, Vernon Hargreaves — who has coached at South Florida, Florida International and Miami (Fla.) — to fill the South Florida void.

Florida immediately saw the benefits of bringing in Shannon. The Gators’ six highest-rated recruits, per the 247sports industry composite, all came from Florida. Three of those players were from Miami or Ft. Lauderdale, and Shannon had a hand in signing two of them.

Shannon’s impact is still being felt at Arkansas, too. One of the geographically farthest schools from Florida, the Razorbacks signed three Florida prospects in 2015; two of them were recruited by Shannon before he left for the Gators. The same is true for all four South Florida players the Razorbacks signed in 2014.

While Cristobal and Alabama are both national recruiters, the OL coach’s connection has brought in the nation’s top receiver in Calvin Ridley this year, and he’s targeting several elite South Florida prospects for the 2016 class.

Will other schools follow the lead of Florida, Arkansas and Alabama and aim to bring in coaches with truer ties to South Florida in order to boost recruiting? Georgia, Auburn and South Carolina, while all close in proximity to the state, don’t traditionally pull the most elite recruits from Florida.

By strengthening their ties to the southern tip of the Sunshine State, SEC schools could start to swing recruiting farther in their favor.