One of the great battles that has developed over the past few years is how football recruiting services have started to use the Florida Gators as clout when prospects make a commitment. We here at Hail Florida Hail have highlighted in the past how On3, in particular, loves to claim that prospects are picking their school "Over Florida" despite the fact that the Gators were never in the running in the first place.
Well, once again, Florida Football is being used as a headline grabber, as once again a prospect who didn't even have Florida among his finalists magically picked his new school "Over Florida."
Florida Football Versus Everyone In Recruiting
Kentavion Anderson announced his commitment to Clemson on Friday night. The four-star safety from South Carolina told On3's Hayes Fawcett he chose Clemson over South Carolina and Florida.
There is just one catch to this narrative:
Anderson had previously put out a top six list and Florida wasn't on that list.
According to his 247 profile, Anderson was offered by Florida back on March 3, but he never took a visit to Gainesville.
Whenever the topic "Over Florida" comes up, the common defense Fawcett and company have is "Well, that's what the player told us when we made the graphic."
But we are talking about a social media account with almost 270K followers as part of a company that wants us to believe they are the authority on recruiting. So if they can't be bothered to ask the follow-up question, "Hey man, Florida wasn't in your top six previously, what changed?" then why should we have faith they aren't being manipulated for a recruit's personal gain?
And if the counter is "Well, he got the offer from Florida and his opinion changed," then why should we care about the initial top six if it is liable to change a month later?
This is all semantics at the end of the day, but it is also exhausting to have the same tired trope trotted out every year with zero pushback from the entities that should know better.