LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Joey Gatewood waited years for a Florida offer. The Auburn commit doesn’t mind anyone knowing that. Attending UF was a childhood dream for the Sunshine State-based quarterback. The offer from his favorite school arrived and things seemed to be falling neatly into place.
Then, the four-star visited campus. It was around then that things took a turn.
“Florida was my dream offer,” Gatewood said. “I went in there with super high expectations but I left on a low. I didn’t like the facilities and I didn’t like how everything was on campus. I just didn’t like it. I was like, ‘This isn’t what I thought it was when I was a kid.’”
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Every recruit is different, and Florida is still a school of interest for plenty of players. This is not the case of a power conference school recruiting at an FCS level, but to say that there hasn’t been at noticeable drop off in recent years is to be naive.
The Gators currently rank No. 17 in the Rivals.com recruiting rankings and finished 14th a year ago. The year before that? No. 24. They have not had the state of Florida’s best class since 2013, which is also the last time they finished in the top five nationally.
On the field, Jim McElwain has led the team to back-to-back SEC championship games and has a 13-3 SEC record. But the 2015 Gators finished the year unranked, and this year's team is No. 17 entering the Citrus Bowl vs. Iowa.
This is a program that finished with a top-five recruiting class six times in eight years from 2006 to 2013. Something has changed, and the ideas on what that may be different depending on which prospect you ask. Florida State’s resurgence has certainly hurt. As has a recent coaching change. Then, prospects say, there are a handful of reasons in between.
“I would definitely consider Florida,” Rivals100 defensive back Asante Samuel Jr. said. “But they haven’t offered me. I can’t tell you why. They have offered DBs smaller than me and slower than me. They offer late, man. They get in late then it’s an uphill battle and becomes a hard process for them.”
Samuel isn’t the only in-state prospect with such an opinion. Ask Al Blades Jr., another four-star defensive back, what he thinks is holding the Gators back on the recruiting trail, and he echoes Samuels’ sentiment despite not hearing his responses.
The thought is independent. It’s also one that was shared by a handful of prospects at the Under Armour Future 50 camp.
“From a coaching standpoint they’re looking for the best of the best,” Blades said. “That’s why they take it slow. They don’t offer like that. They just take it real slow and just really deal with seniors.”
There are, of course, plenty of prospects that hold the Gators in a favorable light. Take IMG Academy tackle Reuben Unije, a Rivals100 tackle. Unije is high on the Gators and the reasons for his take are simple.
“I like the coaches and the players on the team," Unije said. "I like how they’re – well I don’t want to say up-and-coming, because they’re already good – but I like that they keep getting better. I like the environment, too.”
Unije concerns himself with trajectory. And, according to him, that of the Gators’ program is positive. If there was indeed stigma associated with the Gators’ recruiting efforts, Unije says it’s all but faded away.
“I think the reason they aren’t recruiting like it was is because of the down years [under the previous staff],” Unije said. “You know, when you’re up everyone wants to come to your team.”
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