How well are the Gators recruiting in South Florida?
When Billy Napier took over the Florida football program, he made it clear that the goal was to keep the best talent in the state at home. His staff has done a good job evaluating talent and bringing in players that will make an immediate impact, but it’s been difficult to bring in guys from the South Florida tri-state — Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.
South Florida has produced a ton of college talent over the decades and saw 11 players drafted in 2023 alone. Yet, the Gators have just nine players from the area on the 117-man fall roster. Upon even further inspection, Napier and Co. have brought in just two players from Broward and Miami-Dade on scholarship over two recruiting cycles.
Offensive lineman David Conner — a class of 2022 three-star recruit out of Deerfield Beach High — spent a year as a reserve in Gainesville before transferring to Colorado this offseason, and freshman wide receiver Andy Jean played prep ball at Miami Northwestern. Jean figures to be an important piece of the 2023 offense, but that’s still a prediction at this point.
The previous staff brought in a few players from the area that are still with the team. Inside linebacker Derek Wingo and defensive lineman Tyreak Sapp are both St. Thomas Aquinas alumni, and the team’s top cornerback, Jason Marshall Jr., is from Miami Palmetto.
Florida certainly isn’t ignoring the area completely. The recruiting staff is doing its best right now to flip the top receiver in the class of 2023, Jeremiah Smith, who plays at Chaminade-Madonna Prepatroy School in Hollywood, Florida.
But what about the rest of the schools in the area?
At a recent media day in South Florida, the Athletic’s Manny Navarro caught up with a dozen area coaches to talk about changes in the recruiting scene. After addressing the current landscape as a whole, Navarro got into which schools are recruiting in the area the best.
Florida State and Miami were mentioned often, but the Gators only came up in response to which schools could be more present in the area.
“Florida came once,” Booker T. Washington head coach Tim “Ice” Harris told Navarro. “Not as much as they should with (former Florida linebacker) Ben Hanks Sr. graduating from there. I guess everybody has their strategy with how they do things in recruiting.”
Doral Academy’s head coach, Eddie Delgado, reiterated that sentiment, including that he believes recruiting has “gotten a little lazy” as a whole.
“Florida, I’ve never seen the Gators once at Doral,” Delgado said.”This is my fourth year. Now, I may not have the high-end guys they want to see. But in the old days, they came anyway.”
Delgado and Harris both touched on the most logical explanation for the lack of visits to schools in the area. Recruiting has changed and coaches are looking for a certain player they already believe to be elite. Still, Napier’s evaluation process is supposed to find hidden gems.
“The Gators came, but they were position-specific,” Norland head coach Daryle Heidelberg said. “They only wanted to talk to me about (four-star cornerback) Jamari Howard. I think they’re doing their school a disservice.”
It’s still too early to say that the Napier Gators don’t recruit strongly in South Florida, but things are certainly trending that way based on these comments. The good news is that the current staff has pipelines elsewhere in the state. A good amount of talent has come in from the Jacksonville and Orlando areas over the past two years, and Napier has openly established a connection with IMG Academy, which can’t hurt.
Tapping into the South Florida high school scene would be a natural next step for the Gators. At least a dozen players from the area occupy spots in the top 200 from the class of 2025, according to 247Sports. Frequent visits to top programs in the area could lead to some of these other schools getting some love too.
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