{"id":69586,"date":"2025-12-03T13:42:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T13:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/69586\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T13:42:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T13:42:18","slug":"top-overall-florida-recruit-5-star-qb-dia-bell-signs-with-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/69586\/","title":{"rendered":"Top overall Florida recruit, 5-star QB Dia Bell, signs with Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

The top prospect from the Sunshine State made it official on Wednesday, signing with the Texas<\/a> Longhorns. <\/p>\n

Dia Bell<\/a>, a five-star rated quarterback from American Heritage Plantation<\/a> (Fla.), has remained hooked with the Horns since making his pledge on June 17th of 2024<\/a>. The six-foot-three 220-pounder chose Texas over Miami<\/a>, LSU<\/a>, and Penn State<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a sophomore, Bell threw for 1,929 yards and 20 touchdowns and has improved in every season as a signal caller. <\/p>\n

During his junior season, Bell completed 70 percent of his passes for 2,560 yards, throwing for 27 touchdowns and six interceptions. His season was cut short as he suffered a torn ligament between his fibula and tibia, and wide receiver Malachi Toney<\/a> was able to lead the team to a state championship at quarterback.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve come a very long way with my rehab process. When you have injuries like that, you always think it\u2019s the end of the world. Every day, you\u2019ve got to take a step forward, grow, and see that this was done for a reason. I\u2019m happy where I am now. It\u2019s taken me a while, but I\u2019m back now. I\u2019m trying to just build off of it\u2026It took me a while to get here. There\u2019s still some scar tissue breaking up, but it feels way better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following offseason, Bell proved he was fully recovered from the injury, winning the Elite 11, the annual national high school quarterback competition. Bell was the first Texas Longhorn commit to be awarded the MVP of the event<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His senior season was also cut short due to a lower extremity injury. Bell played in two games, completing 63 percent of his passes for 540 yards, four touchdowns, and zero interceptions. <\/p>\n

Dia Bell, the son of former NBA star\u00a0Raja Bell, played basketball in his sophomore season, averaging 13 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 1.8 assists per game. Bell was fully committed to football after that season.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad always encouraged me to play all sports so I could figure out what I liked the best. I played soccer, baseball, tennis, basketball, and football when I was younger. My dad said that he would support me in whatever my passion was. Sports or not.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The top prospect from the Sunshine State made it official on Wednesday, signing with the Texas Longhorns. Dia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9978,40387,47,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-69586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-american-heritage-patriots-plantation","tag-dia-bell-26-american-heritage","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69586","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=69586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}