On Friday, Florida hosted an unexpected visitor for practice in Plant City (Fla.) High offensive lineman Montel McBride.
“One of my coaches was a former player at Florida so he brought me up,” McBride said. “It was a cool day and a good experience. I really like what I seen out of the coaches and the campus was beautiful. It was real nice to see how warm welcoming the coaches were to me and how hard they worked during practice coaching.”
The 6-2, 330-pound McBride didn’t have much contact with Florida before the visit, but that could change now that he’s visited Gainesville.
“I hadn’t really received any letters from Florida this year,” McBride said. “But coach (Tim) Davis and a few of the position coaches were talking to me and telling me that they will watch my film and see how good I am. They also told me to come up for a camp this summer, see how coachable I am and see how good I perform at camp and react to the coaching I get.”
McBride says he is happy to receive the invitation to camp and he will do whatever it takes to potentially earn an offer from Florida.
While at practice, McBride was able to watch the offensive and defensive linemen in drills, allowing him to learn a thing or two in the process.
“Because I play both sides of the ball, I tried to watch both,” McBride said. “It was a fun and good learning experience out there. Football is a game of angles and leverage, and to see how those guys’ mechanics are was crazy. They all get so low to the ground and are strong. It was really good to see that I picked up on a few things.”
McBride participated in the Nike football camp in Orlando on Saturday, and after giving an impressive performance, he was given the offensive lineman MVP award.