With at least 30 arrests issued to UF football players during Urban Meyer’s six years as head coach, Florida’s program has come under scrutiny by many.
While the national perception of the Gators has changed as the arrests have accumulated, there’s one area that has gone unaffected by the team’s legal woes — recruiting.
Four of the last five years, Meyer has put together a top-three recruiting class, according to Rivals.com, including the No. 2 class in 2006, the No. 1 class in 2007 and the No. 3 class in 2008.
By the time National Signing Day came around Feb. 3, there were at least 25 instances in which a UF player was arrested. Despite that, Meyer and his staff put together the No. 2 class in the nation.
The recent string of arrests and national attention they have garnered doesn’t appear to be affecting the 2011 class either, which already has 15 verbal commitments and currently ranks No. 9 in the nation.
“[The number of arrests] never played into my decision,” said Ryan Shazier, a four-star linebacker from Plantation High.
Shazier, the No. 7 outside linebacker in the nation, committed to UF on June 21 — just more than one week after wide receiver Frankie Hammond Jr. was arrested and charged with a DUI on campus. Shazier said that during the recruiting process, the Gators’ legal issues never really came up because it wasn’t something his family was concerned with.
One recruit who did question the arrests during his recruitment was Madison (Mich.) Madison Heights High three-star cornerback Valdez Showers, who said he and his mother expressed worries about who was to blame for the high number of arrests and brought it up with UF’s coaching staff.
“My mom’s concerns were about whether or not the coaches were to blame,” Showers said. “But players do dumb things, too. Everybody has a personal life outside of football.”
The arrests don’t seem to be ammunition for competing schools when it comes to recruiting the same coveted recruits, either. Both Shazier and Showers said other coaches have not tried to get in their ears about UF’s run-ins with the law to try and dissuade them from committing to the Gators.
And even though the legal issues haven’t affected Florida’s ability to bring in top recruits, it still lingers and makes some of them think when considering a scholarship offer from UF.
“It makes you wonder sometimes,” said four-star defensive tackle Timmy Jernigan, who has UF among his top-five choices. “But I really feel like if you go into college and you got your mind set on the right thing and you got your priorities straight, things like that won’t happen to you.”
