Florida Man: Hitting the road for recruiting news and notes

Each week, Rivals.com’s very own Florida man Rob Cassidy takes readers around the Sunshine State, touching on news, notes and developments that relate to Florida-based colleges and prospects. This week, he makes a prediction that will make Iowa State fans happy, introduces a couple of underclassmen and has a look at what Florida prospects think of the Big Ten and Pac-12 sitting out the season.

RELATED: Ten Gators commits land in updated 2021 Rivals250 | Elite 2022 DB Travis Hunter 'locked on Florida State'

CLASS OF 2021 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Position | Team | State

CLASS OF 2022: Top 100

MORE: Rivals Transfer Tracker

Rhone transferred high schools this off-season and seems ready to make an impact at Plant City, where he’ll get increased exposure playing across the field from five-star Oklahoma commit Mario Williams. Unless said exposure brings more offers, however, it seems the three-star wideout’s mind might be made up when it comes to his college decision. Iowa State holds a commanding lead here. And while nothing is ever certain in recruiting, Rhone seems to be heavily trending toward signing with the Cyclones. Matt Campbell already has a pair of Sunshine State players in the fold for 2021. Expect Rhone to make it three.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS WITH IOWA STATE FANS AT CYCLONEREPORT.COM

Daniels is on record as saying he’d like to be committed by the end of August. That may not happen, but an early September decision is possible. Publicly, Daniels is high on a number of schools, but the reality of the situation is that this will be a battle between Miami and Texas A&M. The Aggies seem to hold a slight lead, but UM has made up ground during the pandemic. I’m too much of a coward to wage an official prediction at this point, but I wouldn’t be stunned if Miami overtook A&M before decision day.

One of the top wideouts in the 2022 class and the fastest player in Florida, Knighton is a star in both football and tack. Now it seems, however, he’ll focus on the latter. According to coaches at Knighton’s high school, the two-sport star has chosen to skip football this season in an effort to focus his attention on track, a sport in which he recently ran an age-group-record 20.33 200-meter at the AAU Junior Olympics. The speedy wideout could change his mind and return to football at any time down the road, but his decision to sit out his junior season is significant.

I met Kirkland for the first time at the Elite 100 Camp in Orlando over the weekend, and he’s not hard to pick out of a lineup. The Chicago-born lineman, who already holds a long list of major offers, looks every bit of his 6-foot-7, 340 pounds. Kirkland will need to shape a bit to reach his full potential but his upside is massive and he moved incredibly well for a prospect of his size. Ohio State is thought to be the leader here, but Kirkland showed up at camp in an orange-and-blue Florida hat and says he is high on the Gators, along with the Buckeyes, Georgia, Michigan State and Arizona State.

A class-of-2023 wideout, Waseem has been on the radar of colleges for more than a year now and has a few offers to his name. The catch in regards to his recruitment was how much the once-undersized slot wideout would grow. These days, he seems to be making significant progress on that front. Waseem was measured at 5-foot-10.5 at a camp on Sunday and is also beginning to thicken up. Sure, he could still use another growth spurt, but he’s retained his quickness and crisp routes as he has grown. If this trajectory continues, more colleges should join FIU, Georgia Tech, FAU and others on his list of offers.

Miller carries some bad weight and isn’t as long as you’d like, but the Miami Central High School center has an incredibly strong base and snaps the ball consistently. He hasn’t been playing center full-time for long, but he seems to be comfortable in the role. The class of 2022 lineman may not be headed to a blueblood program because he lacks certain measurables, but he could help any number of FBS colleges if he reshapes over the coming year. Miller has been impressive at a pair of elite camp stops this off-season, one before the pandemic and one during.

I had a chance to talk to elite 2022 defensive end Shemar Stewart on Saturday in Fort Lauderdale as he watched the Crafting Lineman Showcase Camp from the sidelines with me. A subtle thing that stood out about our conversations was that he spoke in uncertainty when discussing most schools, prefacing things with “if I choose to go there.” This changed when discussing Miami, however, as he began prefacing things with “when I get there.” Stewart corrected himself the third time he did it, so he also noticed the tick.

Now, does that mean anything? Who knows? Teenagers don’t tend to put too much thought into word choice, after all. Still, I figured it was worth sharing.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS WITH MIAMI FANS AT CANESPORT.COM

I’m traveling through Florida this week, which means buying produce and boiled peanuts from Ford pickups on the side of the highway. But it also means talking to coaches and players throughout the state. I’ve already spoken with dozens of prospects from different schools about the Pac-12 and Big Ten canceling the fall season. And while there’s a school of thought that says not playing may hurt those schools in recruiting, I think that - at least as it relates to prospects in Florida - the opposite may be true.

The fact of the matter is that very few prospects from the Sunshine State watch Big Ten or Pac-12 games in a normal year. Even fewer could tell you what these programs’ 2019 records were or whether or not they lost to an FCS school. Players get spooked when a program they’re seriously considering fails to meet expectations. No expectations equals no failure, so I wouldn’t expect players to be turned off by not seeing Pac-12 or Big Ten teams on TV each week. In fact, with no fall schedule coaches can now focus more resources on recruiting. Not playing is less than ideal for a number of reasons, sure, but it’s also not the recruiting disaster some want to make it out to be.