Brian Smith joins Alex Donno to discuss where Miami stands in the recruitment of 4-Star WR Vernell Brown and 4-Star DB Hylton "Drake" Stubbs.
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00:00 First player I want to talk about Brian and I'm a little bit concerned about where the Gators may
00:04 stand in his recruitment because his daddy did play for them. But Vernell Brown, the wide receiver
00:10 out of Jones High School in Orlando, didn't have to travel very far for Under Armour Orlando.
00:15 He was called the alpha dog of that event. And the footage that I saw, some of which you sent to me,
00:21 the footage of Vernell Brown, he looked fantastic out there. What did you see from him on the field
00:27 and did you get a chance to talk to him off the field? Number one on the field, he's one of those
00:32 kids that's ultra focused. Doesn't matter if it was the gauntlet drill, a one-on-one, or just running
00:36 the 40, everything he does has purpose. And it's one of the reasons Vernell's a really good football
00:41 player. He's taken after his father. As for talking to him, I said I assume Miami and Florida
00:46 are probably the visits. There are some others. He said Florida State, Stanford, and Ohio State
00:51 are up there under consideration. But he said, honestly, I don't even have a top 10 yet. My goal
00:54 is to get it down to top 10 and figure out visits. He's overwhelmed. He openly admitted his
01:00 recruitment has gone bananas. So great kid. He's like a 4.4 GPA guy. So that kind of helps. Do not
01:07 discount Stanford. They are actually in it. That's obviously a very good academic institution.
01:11 But Miami is the school that's kind of been trending because he's with SFE, the great seven
01:16 on seven program. And he's been down to Miami a couple of times. I would be pretty interested to
01:21 see his visit list right now. I was trying to mess around with that last night. Miami is going to be
01:26 one of them. I'm curious to which other schools look at because he doesn't care about distance
01:30 like a lot of Florida kids do. If you look at Stanford, there is no distance barrier because
01:35 that's just outside of San Francisco. So he's a unique kid, but tremendous player that Miami is
01:40 right there at the top four. Well, yeah. The ACC also decided there's no distance barrier with
01:45 Stanford because they're now on the Atlantic coast. They're no longer on the Pacific.
01:51 Appreciate it. All right. So another player, and this is, I don't know, maybe this coming cycle
01:58 will get more Miami versus Florida battles. We didn't have a lot of those in the 2024. So a ton
02:03 of them in 2023. Not a lot of Miami versus Florida battles in 2024, maybe 2025. Because I want to ask
02:10 you about Hilton Stubbs, Drake Stubbs, star defensive back. I think it was either 24/7 or
02:17 on three who wrote something this week about him kind of strongly trending towards Florida.
02:22 But I know this is a player Miami is very interested in. What have you seen and heard
02:26 from Drake Stubbs? I talked to him a little bit at the event. I don't think he's trending as hard
02:33 as some people might think, but his brother is a walk on at Florida State. He had offers from
02:38 everybody before his junior year was out and he's visited several schools and still planning on it.
02:42 Miami is one of them. As I wrote on all hurricanes, Miami has done an incredible job of just being
02:48 involved with every kid I talked to. It's just, it's unbelievable. Not there aren't a lot of like
02:52 top three lists yet because it's so early in the process. But the only thing you can do is be on
02:57 the list and starting to build a relationship. Miami has done as good a job of that as any
03:01 program in college football. Stubbs likes Miami a lot. I'm really curious because he might visit
03:07 all three of the big three in the state of Florida. One or two out, maybe it's Bama,
03:12 maybe it's Ohio State, whatever, or end up being out of state schools. But I'm not gonna say that's
03:19 completely wrong that Florida's up there, but I don't think they're necessarily trending.
03:23 He seems pretty open to me from talking to him a little bit. We'll see. There are a lot of Florida
03:27 reporters at the event. They're looking for anything to write about right now with Florida.
03:31 They need all the help they can get. I feel sorry for some of my brethren there. But
03:36 I have a hard time seeing him leaving the state of Florida. Probably one of the big three.
03:41 We'll see. And great kid. Can't wait to see where he goes.