I was invited to visit the University of Central Florida yesterday to tour the campus, watch the night practice and promote many of the Tampa Bay football players. I’ve been to the campus to cover a few events such as the annual 7 on 7 and Elite 11 QB challenge, but never really toured the campus.

After hearing so much about the facilities and the environment as a whole, I was really excited to see what all the kids and coaches have been raving about. When I arrived, a few members of the coaching staff in the parking lot welcomed me. We shook hands quickly, had some small talk, and then quickly jumped on the golf cart to see the sights.

What was pretty cool, EVERYTHING regarding football was within 50 feet of each other. Inside the football building, is the weight room, coaches’ offices, meeting room, equipment room and training room. Walk outside, through the back door, take 30 steps in any direction and you walk right on the practice fields, the stadium, the indoor practice facility or the athletic dorms. What else could you ask for? The set up seemed strategically placed for the football team to succeed.

Note: I have not toured many campuses, so I don’t know how others are setup. But, I would hope that others have a similar structure.

We continued on the tour and came to a part of campus that reminded me of the middle of a college town. Something you would expect to see in Gainesville or Tuscaloosa. Except, we were still on campus, right next to the dorms. Bars, food spots, bookstores, etc.; we were not even at the student Union yet.

We made our rounds came back to the coaches’ office to talk the business of Tampa Bay prospects. I sold a few 2013 sleepers pretty hard. Hitting heavy on LBs and defensive linemen. The 2014 kids were fun. They knew all about the studs, but little about some of 2014 kids outside of the ones who receive lots of media attention.

The Knights staff made it plain and simple. They stressed the importance of being a BCS school now and they wanted to recruit the BCS kids, not backing down from the “Big Boys.” They want to stay ahead of the curve in regards to recruiting and be well aware of the top kids in Tampa and across the state as early as possible.

After a few hours talking about prospects, strengths, weaknesses, observations and interest, we headed to the night practice. High school coaches and players should take the opportunity to visit a college practice as often as possible. It’s a free clinic! Observe the structure, tempo and coaching of a college practice. Hear the pop of the pads and the excitement of guys trying keep or take jobs.

Overall, the visits was cool and very beneficial to the Tampa Bay prospects and the UCF coaching staff.