Well, it's the silly season, and I guess we should be used to this sort of thing--young men to whom "commitment means NOTHING", generally, and losing promising receivers, specifically.
I mean, Quinton Powell (LB--Daytona Mainland) was neither a shock NOR a big deal: I'd heard about him whining to friends, highschool coaches and any local reporter-who-asked about every linebacker we talked to. The latest nutso flip-flopper, 4-start WR out of Peach Tree Ga., Demarcus Robinson was another matter: First he makes a big production of finally decommitting from Clemson after claiming all this interest in US throughout the fall, announcing his committing to UF, "I'm a Gator", etc. all over the internet the day after his official visit in G-ville, even fills out the paperwork, signs and submits to early enrollment in January--and it all lasted exactly ONE WEEK.
Now: It ISN'T that I'm so broken up about losing this kid--I mean, you could say that we just caught a BREAK: we learned about, and lost, a "4-star clown" who isn't fit to GET a shot with us, so clearly incapable of EVER motivating himself to care enough about ANYTHING BUT HIMSELF to do things "The Florida Way"...we are too close to our upper limit to waste a place on another one of these self-obsessed loser-fools who won't even be able to cut it IN PRACTICE. Would we take Debose again, knowing what we know now?--and he was by all "signs of physical talent", and according to his "reel", "The next Percy Harvin, blah blah blah" (...too bad he can't even bother to do much more than sulk his way through practice for the last, what is it, 3 years or 4? Was there a redshirt year in there? Who cares? He even stopped wanting to run back punts somewhere along the way--the only thing he ever did for us, and won't even touch them now...Another brilliant, "listen-to-the-experts Urban" Meyer-hire).
No, I'm sure that Coach Boom in some corner of his brain is relieved, maybe even slightly satisfied, at the thought that Joker Phillips (who helped to finally "flip" Robinson) is thinking, "Don't get blinded by the talent of these kids--they're ALL 'talented' at this level...I'm not in Kentucky anymore!". The kid wouldn't have made it here: At Florida now ya gotta be good AND ya gotta really WANT it--and the latter is the more important of the two (though you better have a bunch of the first, 'cause everyone else here does--that's just the way it is).
Still, we NEED receivers, tall, rangy fast ones who go up to get it--and actually CATCH it if it's on their hands. Demarcus looked to be one of those, so the coaches can be excused for "wishin' and hopin'" and plannin' to flip him, get him IN here since he showed so much INTEREST in being a Gator--THAT was a good sign, a point in his favor, from their hopeful POV. We might well have never learned in time about his flaky inconsistency had he NOT flipped back so quickly...and that's the problem with this whole process nowadays: Like everyone else, our greatest needs and their apparent physical skills, concentrated in a solution of shrinking time, form a dangerous chemistry that hides flaws, produces questionable judgement--and possibly poor choices.
Meanwhile, we may well have dodged a bullet, but I suppose our short-lived "#1 recruiting class" just took a hit--after just a few days, when this squirrelly freakout-case started jumping back and forth and, it could be argued, did us a favor when the roulette ball landed on "red" rather than "orange and blue". Maybe, just maybe, we should
(1) take it easy, sit back, reserve judgement, excitement, worry AND disappointment and JUST SEE WHAT HAPPENS, along-the-way ALL-the-way to National Signing Day (NSD), and
(2) trust our Coach and his staff--AND the good fortune that has somehow worked out our way: from "Who's our next Coach?"--we got CHOMP!--through "What the HELL do we do about Weis?"--we got PEASE!-- and so on down to things like, oh, "Whew!--We were so caught up in getting skilled guys in at WR that we almost ended up WASTING one of our last valuable spots on another self-centered, inconsistent and unreliable FLAKE!"
So: Back down into the People-mines with pick and shovel. Lookin' for a vein of 5-star WRs...
"What's left up there on the Big Board, boys?"
I mean, Quinton Powell (LB--Daytona Mainland) was neither a shock NOR a big deal: I'd heard about him whining to friends, highschool coaches and any local reporter-who-asked about every linebacker we talked to. The latest nutso flip-flopper, 4-start WR out of Peach Tree Ga., Demarcus Robinson was another matter: First he makes a big production of finally decommitting from Clemson after claiming all this interest in US throughout the fall, announcing his committing to UF, "I'm a Gator", etc. all over the internet the day after his official visit in G-ville, even fills out the paperwork, signs and submits to early enrollment in January--and it all lasted exactly ONE WEEK.
Now: It ISN'T that I'm so broken up about losing this kid--I mean, you could say that we just caught a BREAK: we learned about, and lost, a "4-star clown" who isn't fit to GET a shot with us, so clearly incapable of EVER motivating himself to care enough about ANYTHING BUT HIMSELF to do things "The Florida Way"...we are too close to our upper limit to waste a place on another one of these self-obsessed loser-fools who won't even be able to cut it IN PRACTICE. Would we take Debose again, knowing what we know now?--and he was by all "signs of physical talent", and according to his "reel", "The next Percy Harvin, blah blah blah" (...too bad he can't even bother to do much more than sulk his way through practice for the last, what is it, 3 years or 4? Was there a redshirt year in there? Who cares? He even stopped wanting to run back punts somewhere along the way--the only thing he ever did for us, and won't even touch them now...Another brilliant, "listen-to-the-experts Urban" Meyer-hire).
No, I'm sure that Coach Boom in some corner of his brain is relieved, maybe even slightly satisfied, at the thought that Joker Phillips (who helped to finally "flip" Robinson) is thinking, "Don't get blinded by the talent of these kids--they're ALL 'talented' at this level...I'm not in Kentucky anymore!". The kid wouldn't have made it here: At Florida now ya gotta be good AND ya gotta really WANT it--and the latter is the more important of the two (though you better have a bunch of the first, 'cause everyone else here does--that's just the way it is).
Still, we NEED receivers, tall, rangy fast ones who go up to get it--and actually CATCH it if it's on their hands. Demarcus looked to be one of those, so the coaches can be excused for "wishin' and hopin'" and plannin' to flip him, get him IN here since he showed so much INTEREST in being a Gator--THAT was a good sign, a point in his favor, from their hopeful POV. We might well have never learned in time about his flaky inconsistency had he NOT flipped back so quickly...and that's the problem with this whole process nowadays: Like everyone else, our greatest needs and their apparent physical skills, concentrated in a solution of shrinking time, form a dangerous chemistry that hides flaws, produces questionable judgement--and possibly poor choices.
Meanwhile, we may well have dodged a bullet, but I suppose our short-lived "#1 recruiting class" just took a hit--after just a few days, when this squirrelly freakout-case started jumping back and forth and, it could be argued, did us a favor when the roulette ball landed on "red" rather than "orange and blue". Maybe, just maybe, we should
(1) take it easy, sit back, reserve judgement, excitement, worry AND disappointment and JUST SEE WHAT HAPPENS, along-the-way ALL-the-way to National Signing Day (NSD), and
(2) trust our Coach and his staff--AND the good fortune that has somehow worked out our way: from "Who's our next Coach?"--we got CHOMP!--through "What the HELL do we do about Weis?"--we got PEASE!-- and so on down to things like, oh, "Whew!--We were so caught up in getting skilled guys in at WR that we almost ended up WASTING one of our last valuable spots on another self-centered, inconsistent and unreliable FLAKE!"
So: Back down into the People-mines with pick and shovel. Lookin' for a vein of 5-star WRs...
"What's left up there on the Big Board, boys?"
