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The Gators’ 24th commitment of the 2010 recruiting class likely sends Florida to the top of everyone’s rankings as the No. 1 recruiting class in the nation.

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Ronald Powell was ready to commit to the Florida Gators last month. But then came the news that Urban Meyer was stepping down as the Gators’ coach.

Powell, 6-foot-2, 225 pounds, from Moreno Valley (Calif.) Rancho Verde, was left in a state of shock. Suddenly the school he wanted to attend would be without its football coach. Then the next day, Meyer changed his original decision and decided he would instead take a leave absence, announcing he would be back for the 2010 season.

That gave Powell, who had made two Gainesville visits, some relief, but he still wasn’t convinced. Numerous conversations with Meyer since then, however, were apparently just what Powell needed. Couple that with head coach Pete Carroll leaving USC for the NFL on Friday, and it was enough for the coveted defensive end to commit to the Gators on Saturday at the Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio.

Powell is a huge get for the Gators. The athletic defensive end showed his versatility early in Saturday’s Army Bowl, making a leaping, juggling touchdown reception from the tight end position. The play even shocked NBC announcers who stumbled before realizing it was Powell, lauded mostly for his defense.

He later in the second half ran back a blocked extra point about 90 yards for a score.

He worked out as both a tight end and a defensive en. Source

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Elam’s back and forth may have been frustrating at times, but put it all into perspective. He committed to Urban Meyer and Florida way back in October of 2008. Elam wanted to take some visits and see what was out there, but remained a commit to the Gators. At least verbally. He grew up knowing Meyer and became very close to the coach. Then one day Meyer resigns. The following day he announces he is instead taking a leave of absence. We can’t imagine what was going through Elam’s head at that point. So he got confused and decommitted. In a moment of weakness (we all have plenty of those) he chose FSU as his college destination, but after having a heart-to-heart with Meyer opened it back up. At that point, it seemed obvious he would come back to Florida and he did. Yes it was an interested road to say the least, but Elam is a special talent and one we will all enjoy watching in a Gator uniform.

The player the Gators have wanted for quite some time also came through on Saturday. Ronald Powell chose Florida over USC, which seemed almost given when Pete Carroll left the Trojans to head to the NFL. One of the top players in the nation (like the other two that became Gators), Powell is more than special. His performance during the Army game echoes that. Both a pass rush specialist and a talented tight end, it looks like Powell could really play on either side of the ball.

If you believe the recruiting services, Powell will end up at defensive end. His speed to the outside is impressive for a player at any level and his strength allows him to power through offensive linemen when necessary. If the Gators do go to a 3-4 defensive scheme as is being rumored, Powell could fit in nicely as a pass rushing outside linebacker. Either way, expect him to be getting to opposing quarterbacks a lot.

Perhaps the classiest announcement came from George Washington (Philadelphia, PA) defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd. Floyd had the hats on the table, which seems to be required at this point, but there were no theatrics. Instead of just picking Florida, Floyd took time to thank a couple of individuals for helping him get to where he is. He even let his high school coach pick up the hat. There was no grabbing one hat and then putting it back down. No shuffling them around. No drama. Just a classy announcement from a classy kid. This is an individual to cheer for.

On the field, Floyd is a load. 6’3”, 300 lbs. to be exact. His strength is probably his greatest…uh…strength. He is able to overpower offensive linemen and good luck trying to block him to the ground. Despite needing some time to develop technique – as many defensive tackles do – Floyd could see a good amount of playing time during his freshman year. It will only make him better in the long run and remember, in his own words, the long run is not just “the next four years, but 40 years.”

Similar to the Under Armour All-American Game just a week earlier, it was a great day for the Florida program. Those committed played well and those who announced were highly sought after. This is shaping up to easily be one of the best classes in the nation. Source

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“He wasn’t just below the radar,” said Tom Martinez, a coach at the camp and a mentor to Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. “He was beneath the dashboard.”

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On one side of the field, seven quarterbacks were dressed in red. Each had already been cast in a reality television series for Fox Sports Net called “The Ride,” which was to follow them for six months and end with one earning a spot, based on a panel’s vote, in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl on Saturday in San Antonio. The rest, including Marcoux, wore blue on the field’s other end.

Martinez, a member of the panel, studied Marcoux’s throws. Also taking notice were Larry Kennan, who helped groom Eli Manning, and Sam Wyche, a former N.F.L. coach. They agreed that Marcoux could hang with the on-field competition.

“Would you like to be in a reality series?” said Rich McGuinness, the president of All-American Games, which runs the bowl game and the reality series.

Marcoux said yes and has made his way from Ivy League recruit from the Bronx’s elite Fieldston School to an “American Idol” of prep sports. He has been accepted via early decision at Dartmouth and is expected to enroll. Still, as the winner of “The Ride,” Marcoux may reconsider if his exposure in the series or his play in the game Saturday results in a scholarship offer to a college of his liking. Ivy League universities do not offer athletic scholarships.

“Everything should be in line with N.C.A.A. rules, but I told him to bring some Dartmouth gear for the cameras,” Dartmouth Coach Buddy Teevens said. “It’s not every year we have a player in that game.”

McGuinness and his wife, Kate, sketched out a blueprint for the series in June. With a background in cable television programming, Kate McGuinness felt the success of “Two-a-Days” on MTV and “Hard Knocks” on HBO had opened doors for further exploration in the field. The objective was simple: show that quarterbacks are made, not born, by being taught proper technique.

“Matt Barkley and Terrelle Pryor were doing fine with exposure,” Rich McGuinness said of the No. 1 quarterback recruits in 2009 and 2008. “Let’s find kids who aren’t.”

In 28 cities, the Football University training camps doubled as casting calls. Of hundreds of quarterbacks, eight were chosen, but one did not show up for the first day of shooting. Enter Marcoux, a baseball player turned quarterback who had wavered until months before about which sport he would pursue in college.

“I was always getting bumped up a level in baseball so that I couldn’t just throw fastballs to get by,” said Marcoux, who has most recently been clocked at 88 miles an hour.

At halftime of a Fieldston football game five years ago, Marcoux’s command and touch were noticed. Coach Gus Ornstein, who had been drafted by the Seattle Mariners as a high school senior in 1994 but chose to play football at Notre Dame, listened to his father, Steve, talk about a boy throwing on the field. Ornstein approached Marcoux on the track afterward but could not immediately persuade him to join the football team.

Even after he decided to play both sports, there were days as a high school freshman when Marcoux did not know left from right.

“The debate was whether he’d turn the correct way on a handoff,” Ornstein said.

With his direction straightened out, Fieldston did not lose a league game the next three seasons and drew local television cameras to the field last fall. Broadcasting the game was Jay Fiedler, a former Dartmouth quarterback who played in the N.F.L. When introduced to Marcoux beforehand, Fiedler punched him on the right arm.

“Just to make sure you don’t go up and break all my records,” Fiedler told him.

Marcoux threw for 319 yards that day in a 42-41 win over Riverdale.

Networking opportunities continue to arise. Martinez, who championed Marcoux throughout the series’ nine episodes that have been shown, invited him to his home in Menlo Park, Calif., two weeks ago, but called days before to see if a scheduling change was possible. Brady, coming off a game against the Buffalo Bills in which he felt he struggled, wanted to fly Martinez to New England for a tuneup. Martinez called Marcoux and asked if he would mind rerouting to Boston for a workout with Brady.

“Let’s just say I have a $2,000 voucher from the airline since the tickets were nonrefundable,” said Marcoux’s father, Rick.

For two days, Brady, his backup Brian Hoyer and Cole Marcoux trained together. Martinez said, “You could not tell there was a high schooler on the field.”

Later, Marcoux ate pizza with Brady in a luxury box while Brady’s dog and 2-year-old son, John, joined them.

“It was surreal,” Marcoux said.

When he suits up Saturday, Cole Marcoux insists he will get dressed like any other game.

“If this isn’t Cinderella, then I don’t know what is,” Kate McGuinness said. “But I do have doubts that Cole’s foot would fit in any glass slipper with that Division I size.” Source

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The rapid-fire ousters of some of college football’s most winning coaches have made college athletics the latest bellwether over the direction of American sports culture. Certainly, coaches are watched more closely than they ever have been, and players feel confident enough to speak out about perceived maltreatment, which was not necessarily true in the past. A coach’s words and actions are subject to challenge – an improvement when it uncovers abusive coaches but a possible demerit when it come to a coach’s ability to keep discipline among players.

“The trend in youth sports is looking for coaches who have a kinder and gentler approach rather than the Bobby Knight throwing-chairs approach, so that mind-set may be filtering up to college athletics as well,” says Patrick Cohn, an Orlando, Fla., sports psychologist and author of the “The Ultimate Sports Parent.” “It sounds like some of these coaches are definitely crossing the line and holding grudges against athletes. The message the schools and the NCAA are sending is: We’re not going to tolerate this, no matter what type of program the coach built.”
A month-long investigation

All three coaches were felled by complaints from players and parents. When a second player corroborated a teammate’s allegation that Leavitt throttled player Joel Miller and struck him in the face twice on the sidelines during a Nov. 21 game against Louisiville, a month-long investigation led to Friday’s firing.

The investigation found that Leavitt “inappropriately grabbed the throat and slapped the face of a student athlete” and that his denials were “consistently uncorroborated by credible witnesses … [and] contradicted by a number of credible witneses,” according to FanHouse, an online sports news site that broke the story.

What’s remarkable is that these aren’t minor league journeymen coaches. Mangino was college football Coach of the Year in 2008. Leach was 2008 Big 12 Coach of the Year. And Leavitt is credited with one of the fastest program turnarounds in the history of college sports, leading the University of South Florida from a nonexistent program 13 years ago to one that now regularly sells out Raymond James stadium in Tampa.

Politics probably played at least some part in the Leach and Leavitt firings; both coaches had butted heads with their respective administrations about the direction of the programs.
While the Leach firing took many in the college football world by surprise, USF’s summary action against Leavitt had the air of inevitability. Leavitt’s emotions were known to rise to the point where he’d at least once head-butted a locker hard enough to bloody his own forehead. “He could be a bully, vindictive,” writes Tampa Tribune columnist Joe Henderson.

In defense of the tough guy

Still, many players have come to the defense of the ousted coaches. And many colleges will weigh a coach’s temperament against “the number of W’s on the season” and the financial windfall from a good bowl game seed, notes Mr. Cohn.

For others, the firings contradict a central tenet of football: the ability of players to take a coach’s guff like a man.

“If my son called and said, ‘Coach made me run X amount of laps or yelled at me or made me stand in a dark room for an hour,’ I’d say, ‘Son, are you a football player? I think you’re going to face a lot worse on game day,’ ” high school coach Ron Freeman, the father of Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Josh Freeman, tells the Kansas City Star.

Empowered by doting parents and insta-communication technology, more players are letting their thoughts, feelings, and reactions emanate from once-sacrosanct depths of the clubhouse. Coaches who expect what happens in the locker room to stay in the locker room will have to rethink their assumptions, experts say.

“There’s no longer anonymity in the locker room,” sports psychologist Harold Shinitzky tells the Star.

The lines of how far a coach can go to push a player change, of course, sometimes subtly. In some ways, the recent firings should come not as a surprise, but as evidence of the slow suffusion of new values and attitudes into the NCAA’s constellation of schools.

In 2004, NCAA president Myles Brand, who as University of Indiana president had fired the hotheaded Bobby Knight in 2000, instituted a strategic plan that mandates that “individuals at all levels of intercollegiate athletics will be accountable to the highest standards of behavior,” the Monitor wrote after Leach’s firing. SOurce

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