Click here to subscribe today or Login.
NEW YORK — This much is certain at Florida: Any doubts about Urban Meyer’s future with the Gators didn’t hurt their recruiting one bit this year.
Florida landed the top-rated recruiting class in the country Wednesday, the first and by far the busiest day of the national letter of intent signing period for high school football players.
“The key to recruiting is a lot like the keys to making a great sale,” said Meyer, who has won two national championships in five seasons with the Gators. “The first one is having a great product and we obviously have that here at the University of Florida.”
As usual, national signing day was mostly about the rich getting richer.
While Florida took the mythical recruiting national championship — all the notable ranking services had the Gators on top — Alabama and Texas, the teams that played for the BCS title last month, also loaded up for future runs.
Southern California and Tennessee withstood late coaching changes to land highly regarded classes. And Auburn showed it’s not about to concede the state of Alabama to Nick Saban and the Tide.
But the big winner was Florida, a program that seemed on the verge of disarray six weeks ago.
A day after Christmas, Meyer resigned to deal with health problems. The next day he decided instead to take a leave of absence — but not until he had locked up a recruiting class loaded with many of the bluest blue chippers in the land.
At the top of Florida’s class is Ronald Powell, a 240-pound defensive end rated the No. 1 prospect in the country by Rivals.com.
Residing in maybe the most fertile football state in the country, the Gators always stock up on homegrown talent. Sixteen of Florida’s 28 signees are from the Sunshine State. But Meyer and his staff showed off their range, too.
“They do have that reach. They do have that appeal,” said Jeremy Crabtree, national recruiting editor at Rivals.com. “If you’re a hot recruit, you’re going to have Florida at the top of your list.”
Powell is from Moreno Valley, Calif., near Riverside, and highly rated defensive back Joshua Shaw came to Florida from Palmdale, Calif., about 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
The Gators ventured into the Northeast for two of the most-wanted defensive linemen in Sharrif Floyd of Philadelphia and Dominique Easley of New York City.
“I think that’s a class people are going to look back a couple of years from now and say, ’Wow, this is once-in-a-lifetime type of class,”’ Crabtree said.
ESPNU, Scout.com, SuperPrep Magazine and MaxPreps all ranked Florida No. 1.