South Florida is deeply connected to Gators\u2019 cornerbacks coach Brandon Harris in his heart and in how he recruits his players.<\/p>\n
Florida recruits many players from south Florida, with more than 25 players from last season\u2019s roster coming from the area. The cornerbacks across college and professional football from south Florida rank among the best in the country. The Miami native has been coaching and watching many of them play for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey get introduced to playing with a lot of pressure and high pressure at a young age,\u201d Harris said. \u201cWhen guys learn how to play with that amount of pressure and accountability early on in their career, when they come to college, they don\u2019t shy away from that spotlight. They almost embrace it and they look for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some players whom Harris has known for years are J\u2019Vari Flowers and Ben Hanks III. The two freshmen expect to make an impact in Florida\u2019s secondary this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey come in pairs, man, you can\u2019t say one without the other, because every time you see them they\u2019re going to be together,\u201d Harris said. \u201cCertain players just have that \u2018it\u2019 about them. Certain guys people want to see play.<\/p>\n
\u201cJ-Rock [J\u2019Vari] was one of those guys. \u2018Man, I want to watch J-Rock play. I\u2019m here to watch Ben\u2019s team play.\u2019 Certain guys just have that aura and that \u2018it\u2019 about them, and I knew they were going to be pretty special.\u201d<\/p>\n
After taking the job, Harris\u2019 top priority was maintaining the guys on Florida\u2019s roster, such as Dijon Johnson, Flowers and Hanks III. After all the coaching changes, Harris knew there was a possibility that everyone could enter the portal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was on a Disney cruise for Christmas break. My entire cruise was Facetime calls with our players, talking to them about staying at Florida,\u201d Harris said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t take much convincing, because they all love this place. They just wanted to know, \u2018OK, what\u2019s the plan for me next?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI made it a must thing that I talked to them. We wanted them to know how important they were to this position room and this staff. We felt like that room had a lot of potential and room to still grow. We wanted to spend our time recruiting them as opposed to players in the portal.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the Gators\u2019 top defensive backs last season was Cormani McClain, who opted to return to Florida under his new coach. McClain made 17 tackles and an interception for Florida last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cMani is great man, he\u2019s exceptional,\u201d Harris said. \u201cHe\u2019s not very vocal, but when you sit down and have a conversation with him, this dude is interesting. And he\u2019s excited for the opportunities in front of him and playing with these guys that chose to stay and be Gators.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
By taking the job at Gainesville, Harris has now coached at every Division I school in the state of Florida. Having the south Florida background and relationships he has built have made his transitions between jobs easy.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust putting on this logo and sharing the locker room with this group of guys, I\u2019m extremely excited about being here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Category: Feature Sports News<\/a>, Gator Sports<\/a>, Gators Football<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Florida is deeply connected to Gators\u2019 cornerbacks coach Brandon Harris in his heart and in how he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[44349,28,56,6082,30,29,6083,58,807],"class_list":["post-162620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-brandon-harris","tag-florida","tag-florida-football","tag-florida-gators-football","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-gator-football","tag-gators-football","tag-south-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}