FSU Football making hard push for South Florida recruits

FSU Football seems like they are getting back to making recruiting Sunshine State hotbeds the top priority – with no area hotter than South Florida.

In the history of FSU football, players who have come from the tri-county area of South Florida have been one of the main reasons that the Seminoles became a major powerhouse in the game. Just last season, names like James Blackman, Brian Burns, Matthew Thomas and more were among those who kept the Noles afloat and came from either Miami-Dade, Broward or Palm Beach.

In recent years, the number of players who came from the area to Tallahassee have started to decline from what they once were (more genius that came from the last administration when they started mailing it in) – and there is no sugarcoating the fact that the slide down in recent years is related somewhat to ignoring such a fertile recruiting area.

New FSU football head coach Willie Taggart, who loved recruiting South Florida when he was coaching at USF, has made recruiting big hotbeds of talent like South Florida, Tampa and Orlando a top priority to go along with getting top recruits from across the nation. It showed last week with a push to get top players from those three counties to Tallahassee.

Several top recruits from the 2019 and 2020 class were on campus with both Miami-Dade and Broward high schools being on spring break. The biggest name was five star 2019 wide receiver Frank Ladson, a former Florida Gators verbal commit who was making his first visit to the Seminoles from Homestead South Dade.

Two of Ladson’s high school teammates, 2020 offensive linemen Jose Mirabal and Jonathan Denis, got offers after their visits to Tallahassee.

Two other visitors of note came from Doral Academy Charter school just west of Miami – as 2020 defensive end Samuel Anaele, who just started playing football in the spring of 2017 after moving from Nigeria, and 2019 offensive tackle Wardrick Wilson made their way to see what FSU football is all about with Anaele getting an offer.

FSU football is in the running for plenty of talent from the area, with a verbal commit from defensive back and Rivals No. 2 player in the state Akeem Dent of Wellington’s Palm Beach Central and the No. 7 player in WR John Dunmore from Hollywood’s Chaminade-Madonna Prep (a former UF commit) calling the Seminoles his dream school after getting an offer in February and visiting the campus again this weekend with his family.

Next: FSU Coaches doing a great job of getting kids to visit campus

Taggart and the staff are going to get the best players to come to FSU football no matter where they live – but it is refreshing that the new staff recognizes where the best players come from…the state of Florida and the hotbeds across the area.