Florida football: Arik Gilbert enters transfer portal…again
By John Buhler
Arik Gilbert is leaving the Florida football program, as he is re-entering the transfer portal.
It seems like only yesterday Arik Gilbert committed to Dan Mullen’s Florida football team.
After one of the shortest stints in Gainesville you will ever see, the former five-star recruit from Marietta, Georgia is re-entering the transfer portal. Gilbert committed to LSU out of Marietta High School as the No. 5 player in the country in the 2020 recruiting class. He did not finish the season in Baton Rouge, as he cited homesickness as a primary reason he left the Bayou Bengals initially.
While his home state’s Georgia Bulldogs or the nearby Clemson Tigers looked to be in the running to land him in the transfer portal the first time, Gilbert went to LSU’s cross-divisional rival down in the Sunshine State. Gilbert never even played a game for Mullen, as this former Tiger is on the prowl once again to find his new college football team.
Gilbert tweeted out this message on Sunday afternoon about his decision to leave Florida.
“I have decided to decommit from the University of Florida and re-enter the portal. I will not be announcing my final decision until i am enrolled into school and on campus.”
What Power 5 teams could be in the mix to gain Arik Gilbert’s third commitment?
With Gilbert leaving Florida, this means a five-star talent is on the move once again. While Clemson and Georgia would make sense logistically for him, as neither southeastern campus is more than two hours away from his native Marietta, let’s keep an eye on the two Alabama programs in the SEC West, too. A ton of Metro Atlanta kids go to Alabama and Auburn.
Like Clemson, Auburn’s campus is very close to the Georgia border. Auburn University is only three hours away from Atlanta. As for Alabama, Tuscaloosa is about four hours away. While it is not as close as any of those three, it is still closer than Baton Rouge or Gainesville. If proximity matters the most, there is a Power 5 school in Atlanta. Could he play for Geoff Collins at Georgia Tech?
Wherever Gilbert ends up playing college football in 2021, he will be the first one to tell us.
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