From Philly to The Swamp

Today is National Signing Day. If you're not a college football fan that probably doesn't mean anything. Today is when high school athletes sign on the dotted line to play college football at Florida, Alabama, Texas, etc. It's the culmination of a crazy process in which grown men like me obsessively follow the whims and shifting "commitments" of teenagers. It's easy to get cynical, but there are some good stories too. For a select few today is a ticket out, a reward for years of hard work on and off the field.

Here's an article by Pat Dooley on one of the new Florida Gators:

The growth can be measured by the tangibles, the 310 pounds of man who will be leaving Philadelphia behind. The quick feet that helped him become a five-star recruit. The strength that allowed him to brush offensive linemen to the side as if they were flies on a sandwich.

Those you can measure. Those you can see. Those make it hard to believe he was so small when he was born you could hold him with one hand.

But the intangibles, to see that growth you have to know his story, how he has gone from premature baby to mature adult.

“I've made the best of it,” Sharrif Floyd said. “It helps you grow up fast.”

The defensive tackle from Philadelphia will sign a letter of intent to become a Florida Gator today. He already has plans to head south the day after he graduates from George Washington High School.

“I can't wait to get down there,” he said.

Floyd is one of those kids who had every reason not to make it out, every reason to get caught up in the mean streets of Philly. Instead, he is a 3.0 grade-point average student who has had recruiters salivating for two years.

“Whatever he gets, he deserves,” said Washington coach Ron Cohen. “He's worked his tail off for it.”

His story began when he was born three months premature. Floyd spent several months on a heart monitor before being released from the hospital. The world he entered was not a pretty one.

He would go to school wearing the same clothes day after day, sometimes with buttons missing. He didn't want to go to school because he was so embarrassed by the way he looked.

But he hung in there, stayed out of trouble and started getting big. Huge. As a ninth-grader, he was 6-foot-2 and 275 pounds.

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