National Signing Day was a big day for the Florida Gators as the new coaching staff celebrated a really solid 2018 recruiting class that added six new members last Wednesday.
This new coaching staff was only on the job for less than two months with some of them not even being on campus for that long before signing day hit.
Defensive coordinator Todd Grantham was one of the first assistants to arrive in Gainesville with Dan Mullen and he has been at his share of schools but he admits being at Florida helps in recruiting.
Grantham spoke on Tuesday about what wearing the Gator logo on the recruiting trail can do for him and the rest of the coaches.
“The thing that I see is it definitely gets you in the door. There’s a lot of excitement when you walk into a school wearing the Gator logo,” Grantham said of recruiting with the Florida logo on your chest. “From there I think it’s a matter of presenting and showing how you can develop a player academically, athletically and socially. To me it’s a great opportunity. It allows you to recruit to a great institution. I think it symbolizes a standard of
championships, not only as far as winning championships on the field
but academically it’s one of the top universities in the country. All
of those things attract people.”
Grantham admits that the first step in landing any prospect is getting in front of him and that’s exactly what the Gator logo can do for them.
“It gets you in the door. It’s going to attract people to find out what you’re about,” he said on what the logo allows him to do. “When you get that open,
the openness to maybe talk to guys it allows you to present the
program that you have and the way that you develop a guy. To me it was
pretty exciting.”
The Gator logo and the academics that the University of Florida can offer any student-athlete was a big key on signing day when the Gators landed a prospect out of Alabama.
Defensive line coach Sal Sunseri explained how those two things proved to be big when the Gators landed Malik Langham last Wednesday against tough competition.
“To go up in Huntsville, Ala., and get Malik out of there is a
compliment to the University of Florida,” Sal Sunseri said. “I think when you go in there you know you’re battling Alabama and you know you’re battling Auburn. I think what’s unique about him is this kid is a student-athlete
bringing him down here and the way our academic program is set up and
the way when he went over there and he saw our facility it really,
really helped us. Meeting with him on Sunday here on a recruiting
visit and showing him and then asking questions and getting feedback
from him showed me he can learn, he can move. He’ll be productive
football player for us.”
Grantham and Sunseri were both big recruiters of Langham but the defensive coordinator explained that there recruiting territories aren’t set in stone yet.
One thing Grantham did admit is that no state or high school is off limits as the Gators look to get back to the top of the college football world.
“I don’t think it’s defined yet. Obviously everyone will have a piece
of Florida,” Grantham said of the recruiting roles. “Everybody will have a piece of Georgia. From there it’ll be kind of based on people’s backgrounds and things like that. That’s still a work in progress, I don’t know if it’s been 100% defined. The biggest thing is we have to work hard in recruiting to get the best players here.”