Five teams that will benefit from coaching change at Miami

Mark Richt’s sudden and shocking decision to retire from coaching leaves a hole at the helm of one of the country’s most attractive recruiting jobs. It also provides a number of teams with the opportunity to turn the chaos at Miami into a positive on their campuses. Below, we take a look at the recruiting impact that Richt’s departure will cause with an examination of the five teams set to benefit from Sunday’s news.

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This couldn’t have come at a better time for the Gators, who suddenly seem to be wearing the crown as the Sunshine State’s undisputed top program. The rise of Dan Mullen’s team has come at the same time as the collapse of a UM program that seemed to be headed for national prominence just one year ago.

Gainesville is now home to the state’s most stable situation and the Gators are miles more desirable than their two in-state rivals. There aren’t many 2019 prospects with which the news will help UF, but 2020 will be interesting to watch. Five-star prospect Fred Davis and Rivals100 Marcus Rosemy are two names to watch, as both seem to have some level of interest in both UF and UM. With the Hurricanes being forced to start over, the Gators are set to reap some serious rewards.

Willie Taggart has not had the kind of success he’d like in the Miami area since taking over at FSU. Instead, he’s focused more of his efforts on Tampa and the north part of the state. Now is the time for that to change. Richt stepping away and uncertainty taking hold on their rivals’ campus, will help the Seminoles swing the door on South Florida wide open in 2020.

UM has six 2020 commits, and Taggart now has the ability to seize any number of them. Add in the fact that the Hurricanes’ new staff will be solidly behind when it comes to building relationships with uncommitted members of the class, and it’s clear that FSU should feast in the 2020 cycle. That’s assuming Miami fails to make a superstar hire, of course.

This likely seals the deal for Georgia when it comes to the recruitment of Rivals100 defensive back Tyrique Stevenson, a four-star prospect for whom the Bulldogs are battling Miami.

The benefits for UGA are much larger than that, however. Kirby Smart has signed three Florida-based prospects in this class alone. A year ago, that number was four, with all four coming from Miami’s backyard counties of Broward and Dade. The allure of Georgia was already strong, as the Bulldogs are geographically feasible perennial SEC contender, but having Miami in another rebuild certainly won’t hurt the Bulldogs’ efforts to snag a few top-rated prospects from area.

The Tigers’ inclusion on this list is more or less based on Rivals100 athlete Mark-Antony Richards, whose brother shined as a wide receiver at UM. Richards has long been considering Auburn, but this could be the move that pushes him into Gus Malzahn’s arms. On the whole, the Tigers haven’t been a major player for top south Florida talent recently, but this could help raise their stock in the region, as Miami-based 2020 prospects will be more open to listening to widespread pitches while the hometown program attempts to sort itself out.

Auburn has signed eight Sunshine State players in the last three years, so it’s not as though they’ve been absent from the area. This simply provides a chance for Malzahn and company to level up.

Oklahoma has stepped up its already-strong recruiting efforts in South Florida since Lincoln Riley took over the program, so seeing the local school forced to start at square one will likely help the Sooners, who continue to build pipelines at power high schools such as St. Thomas Aquinas. OU has signed an Aquinas graduate in each of the last two classes.

Even on the larger scale, however, this is huge. The level of Florida-based prospect that considers the Sooners seems to be improving by the year and this could help Riley and company begin to land the truly big fish in Broward and Dade counties. Aside from all that, Oklahoma was already the favorite to land five-star 2019 wide receiver Jadon Haselwood, so this certainly doesn’t hurt on that front.