Bobby, i'm beginning to wonder if UF has decided all this early commitment business is a big waste of time - Bring them in for the camps and stuff, show them what UF has, wine and dine them on visits, don't "press" for commitments early and put on the pressure during the 2nd half of the season when the bidding wars begin?
Putting flippers on the payroll just takes away from the payroll for the actual players. Makes perfect sense to me.
UF's big recruiting visits haven't begun yet. They have 3 big weekends coming up the first part of June.
I believe that’s what it is. Florida recruits itself and with how NIL is so rampant now, I like the approach you said and feel the safe is doing that too. Napier can recruit, we’ve seen that and we seen how recruiting picked up after we went on a run to end last season. Just staying contention with these kids even when/if they commit elsewhere and let the results on the field provide em a reason to commit/flip. As we’ve seen, we don’t have a NIL “problem” anymore so kids know UF will take care of them financially (look at our roster retention as far as keeping our top end talent).
These kind of recruiting stunts used to be against NCAA rules. Mullen got sanctioned just a few years ago for an illicit bump with the Smalls recruit. I guess anything goes now.
We kept our roster but we didnt make a splash in the portal. No idea if thats financial or we have all we want.
My hope is the staff is happy and excited with player development. They have indicated as such and that they will use the portal should they see an opportunity to improve at certain positions or add depth. Of course Wanne, they could be looking at the bank account as well . My impression is the staff is genuinely pleased with development. I like that myself, it's been a long three years, but as an old school-er I still like developing players out of H.S. over several years instead of re-stocking 30 out of the portal every cycle. Locally speaking Ole Miss and FSU have both shone "Portal-ling" can build a roster in a hurry, but one years glory can turn into next years disaster. See.....ahem.....FSU on this for sure. UF looks like they (may) have finally gotten into that part of Napier's coaching cycle where he has developed youth, sprinkled in some Portal guys and "should" be fielding a decent squad this year. A squad that should compete at the highest level of the SEC. We shall see.
I agree but the only hole i se is adding a very limited number of marque players that would be considered elite. It would be necessary to outbid everyone to do so. That may be the difference in making the pkayoffs vs winning it all.
Yeah, perhaps. My impression is UF is just not interested in higher end Portal guys or even 5 star H.S. recruits. Perhaps one or two 5 stars out of H.S. but nothing close to what Texas, OSU, Oregon and Georgia are doing. Those four seem to be dialed into those top 30 HS players every year.
And they will most likely win at a higher rate. I just hope we can upset some teams in the playoffs once in a while.