Florida Football: Not every recruit is picking their school “Over the Gators”

When it comes to recruiting, Florida football wins some, and they lose some. Virtually any prospect that has any kind of star rating next to them and lives anywhere remotely close to Gainesville is going to get a look from Billy Napier and his staff.

Then as the evaluation process continues, the Gators whittle down who they actually want to go after. So there will be prospects that the Gators made an offer to that, in reality, are not offers Napier would plan to honor.

It’s with that in mind that it does seem weird that numerous prospects that Florida essentially stopped recruiting a while ago claim they picked the actual school they plan to play college football at “over Florida.”

Florida Football: Not your buddy, guy

A solid number of recruits go through Hayes Fawcett to make their announcement to the college football world about where they intend to start their college football journey at. You have probably seen the posts if you are on Twitter; it has the player standing inside their new stadium in a lifelike manner, along with a couple of poses.

The Gators have had multiple commitments make their announcement through Fawcett.

https://twitter.com/Hayesfawcett3/status/1670951701480632323?s=20

There seems to be this trend, however, whether it’s with Fawcett or people commenting on player commitments, that players who Florida weren’t really pushing for that wind up elsewhere need to include they picked their new school “Over Florida.”

We’re not going to name names here because, ultimately, we are nitpicking semantics. But if you follow recruiting closely enough, you know a number of these “Over Florida” commits either never took an official visit to Gainesville or took a visit but Napier had already earned the commitment of a player in the position group they liked better.

Just keep that in mind the next time someone on Twitter goes, “We stuffed Billy Napier into a locker.”

No, no you didn’t.

Because it’s not so much a case of players choosing their school “Over Florida,” it’s a case of Florida football choosing players over them.

There is a reason the Gators have the number two recruiting class in the country right now.