One of this year's best recruiting soap operas has taken another twist with Van Jefferson, the longtime UGA commit who backed off his pledge to the Bulldogs last week.
On Sunday night, the 4-star wide receiver from Brentwood, Tenn., announced on Twitter that he committed to Ole Miss.
Jefferson revealed to 247sports.com's Barton Simmons that he had always wanted to go to Ole Miss. He just had to get his father's blessings about that decision.
“I always wanted to go down there but my dad had reservations about it,” Jefferson said. “He’s on board with it now. He told me he wants what’s best for me. I picked it so it’s time to get rolling.”
Ex-UGA WR commit Van Jefferson (247sports)
Jefferson’s father is Shawn Jefferson, who played receiver for the Atlanta Falcons. The elder Jefferson coached on the 2012 Tennessee Titans staff with Tracy Rocker, who is now UGA’s defensive line coach. That friendship led the younger Jefferson to commit to the Bulldogs seemingly out of the blue last summer.
Van began wavering on his UGA decision before the coaching changes, hastily taking a one-day official visit to Ole Miss in early December. Jefferson maintained that he was still officially committed, but UGA lost a ton of momentum when Jefferson opted to not enroll early in classes with the Bulldogs earlier this month.
Jefferson finally broke things off with UGA after taking what he termed a “successful” visit to Oklahoma last weekend. Ole Miss got back into the picture in a big way when Jefferson returned there for an unofficial visit this weekend.
Jefferson had previously said that his mother favored Ole Miss, while his father wanted him to go to UGA.
With signing day less than 10 days away, there could be another twist: Jefferson has left open the possibility that he still might visit Florida this weekend, despite his commitment to Ole Miss.
UGA has four other commits at wide receiver for 2015, but there's a little uneasiness about the situation right now because Darius Slayton showed up for a surprise visit at Auburn this weekend, while Jayson Stanley took a trip to UCF.
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