College football recruiting can be a dirty business, and we got another taste of that this week when Florida had to address rumors of a violation. The twist is that a Miami Hurricanes fan says he/she was responsible for creating the story.
Things got started when someone posted on the Rivals message board that the Gators were facing serious trouble from the NCAA after a recruit recorded video of two Gators coaches offering him cash. The allegation — which was a troll job — got picked up and shared on Twitter, and then went viral.
According to SEC Country, the rumor was so significant that Miami coaches reached out to Florida commits to see if they wanted to reconsider their commitments to Florida in light of the alleged violation. Florida coaches then supposedly messaged their recruits to tell them the rumor was false.
They were absolutely correct.
On Thursday night, a Miami fan admitted on Canes Insight that he/she created the rumor.
Guys, this was a massive troll job executed to perfection by none other than myself. I posted this beauty on the Rivals Mainboard on Wednesday night. To be honest, I thought I was a rather obvious troll, but the @UGArecruiting twitter handle picked up my post and tweeted it out. That caused it to go viral, and now everyone is talking about it across multiple sites.
If anyone had actually done any digging before spreading the rumor, they would have realized that Florida wasn’t recruiting any prospects from Homestead High, as was alleged in the rumor. But they didn’t and the story went viral, causing people on both sides to react.
College football recruiting is a dangerous game with lots of sketchy characters. And even though this story was proven false, you can never rule anything out, especially when this happened to a Florida coach a few years ago.
National Signing Day is only a few days away.
H/T The Spun
