College Football

Miami Hurricanes Fan Trolls Florida

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 10:36 p.m. ET

Fansided, Alan Rubenstein/FanSided via Canes Warning

A Miami Hurricanes fan trolled the University of Florida and set off a viral post when he claimed that the Gators had committed recruiting violations in their pursuit of a player both schools were after.

The allegation was that there was a video of a University of Florida Recruiting target being offered cash by two Gator coaches. The Miami fan ultimately admitted that he made the entire story up. Florida wide receivers coach Joker Phillips abruptly resigned three years ago reportedly due to recruiting violations.

Like many things on the internet in the current climate, the story was picked up and went viral. It went viral on both traditional media and on social media. Some reports went as far as saying that some Miami coaches were calling the Florida commits to gauge their interest in switching their commitment from Florida to Miami.

The post created a ton of controversy and had fans speculating that Florida was about to get in trouble with the NCAA for the since proven false allegations.

The report from LarryBrownSports said that the Gators coaching staff had to cover their tracks. They reportedly reached out to the recruits in question to inform them the allegations were not true and to likely make sure these players were still committed to the University of Florida.

Although the incident was not true a lot can be learned from it. It shows the prevalence of fake news and how its dipped into all areas of society. It creates a level of the importance of fact checking before something is reported and the post(s) goes viral. The fan who goes by the handle skibbyskibby on Rivals.Com later retracted what he said on with his own post:

“Guys, this was a massive troll job executed to perfection by none other than myself. I posted this beauty on the Rivals Mainboard on Wednesday night. To be honest, I thought I was a rather obvious troll, but the @UGArecruiting twitter handle picked up my post and tweeted it out. That caused it to go viral, and now everyone is talking about it across multiple sites.”

Florida has three big rivals. In addition to the Hurricanes, they also are arch rivals of Georgia and Florida State, both of whom they play every year. The fact that Mark Richt who is now coaching at Miami coached at all three of UF’s rivals adds an interesting dimension to the rivalry.

The player that was supposedly involved the fictitious recruiting scandal was said to have been from Homestead, Florida. The fact that the Gators are not recruiting any Homestead players should have been easy for anyone to vet out in this vast information age.