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DEL.ICIO.USFlorida’s Meyer speaks about his class
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Florida Coach Urban Meyer spoke this afternoon about this year’s recruiting class. Here are some of his comments:
“Everyone has been asking me about the last three classes and it’s hard to say that this isn’t my favorite class. If you look at the amount of time and research spent on each player, there are always going to be issues and certain things show up but I am awful proud of our staff that did it the right way.
“Many times, people jump on early commitments and we did not do that. We had a lot fewer numbers going into this year and had a couple transfers who increased that but we had fewer numbers than we had the previous years. I am very pleased with the amount of research that we did and the quality of student that we brought in.
“Obviously, we think that they will qualify or else we would not have signed them. I would like to thank the families of our coaching staff. It has been a grind, every since the National Championship game and all the way through. I’d like to thank their wives and kids for letting me have them and now they can be dads and husbands for a couple days and then we will be back to work for next year.
“I also want to thank Dr. Carodine, Tony Meacham, Jason Storch and Kim Green for doing a wonderful job. Also, Mickey Marotti, Scotty Holsopple, Mark Campbell and the entire staff did a great job. Kenny Parker is one of my favorite people. He played here and we asked him to be very helpful with our recruiting and he was. Remember that name because he is going to be a tremendous weight coach or football coach. Anthony Pass and the training staff did a wonderful job.
“Mark Pantoni is now in charge of our recruiting efforts and he did a great job. Mark and Emily Heater ran the show and did a phenomenal job for us. Obviously, our players helped us out. The new facility is going to be a tremendous help. It is going to be the front door of Florida Football. We look forward to that.
“Overall, it is a great class and that makes it three in a row. We are going to have a roster of 25 upperclassmen and 60 underclassmen. We have 11 seniors so it is going to be a very young team. We have 31 players with three more years of eligibility and now 29 players with four years of eligibility. The future is awful bright and I am anxious to get back out there and coach our team.”
On the last month of recruiting
“We closed really well. Not that I’m into rankings but every time I visited a site like Rivals.com and see where we were ranked I was concerned myself. We were not ranked very high and then seven recruits later and you are. I think at one point we were No. 1. I saw that some teams are signing like 35 players and we have 22. I am not concerned about rankings, but a part of me likes to check.
“When you start adding people like Omar Hunter and T.J. Lawrence, who came in late, it became a good day for us. We had a bunch of guys who wanted to commit early, but I am not into that. We have people that say they want to commit but want to take four or five trips in the fall, so I tell them not to commit and to take those trips. The ones who commit early usually do not hold and that is why I am opposed to the early signing period as well. You are asking young people to make a decision that will follow them around for the next three or four years. So I think they should take their visits, come back and sit with their high school coaches and families and make the best decision.”
On filling needs on the roster
“I have a personnel board that I work off of. For example, you want 16 offensive linemen and we have 15 now. We want seven defensive tackles and I think we have seven. This is the first time I can remember that we have three returning quarterbacks. We have gone from recruiting where we will take whatever we can get to now we are trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together. Secondary is one of those areas, we have two tremendous corners coming in and three safeties entering as well. That is an area where we have to improve and I think we will.”
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Florida
Comments
By Al Sharpton
February 6, 2008 9:34 PM | Link to this
Omar will end up at uga now that there is a scholly, he will give up a red shirtyear to come back home. Just watch and see Urban LIAR.
By a
February 6, 2008 10:26 PM | Link to this
al, nice to hear from you. i figured you would be busy listening everyword coming out of imus’s mouth. glad you had the time to step away and follow up some college football. just remember we always mourn the ones that got away. i think the hair wax has clouded you thoughts when it comes to omar, why would someone with his talent want to put off the nfl payday another year by signing somewhere and then doing an about face in order to go elsewhere, especially when the level of play is rather equal. as with some recruits, he may not pan out, then i could see him returning home in order to set himself up in the hometown state to further non football playing career. always look forward to your next profound statement Al.
a
By bull-gator
February 7, 2008 8:23 AM | Link to this
Al, you are a funny, funny guy. thanks for the chuckle.