Kennard on schedule to commit (cont.)

Win a title, lose some recruits

Cornerback Greg Reid decommitted from Florida after coach Urban Meyer failed to guarantee him playing time. Chris Livingston/Icon SMI Andy Staples's Mailbag Have questions or feedback? E-mail Andy Staples. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Andy Staples on Twitter

If Florida coach Urban Meyer used Twitter, he and Carroll could commiserate about a similar problem: players decommiting because of stocked depth charts.

Meyer, winner of two of the past three BCS titles, has learned that success also provides rivals ammo in the recruiting process. In the past month, three players --Valdosta, Ga., cornerback Greg Reid, Broomfield, Colo., offensive lineman Nick Kasa and DeLand, Fla., tailback Mike Gillislee -- reneged on long-standing commitments to Florida. One, Gillislee, committed to Florida again shortly after, but Reid and Kasa are gone. Kasa, who committed to Colorado, has said in interviews that he felt more comfortable in Boulder. Reid, who is considering Alabama, Florida State and Georgia, told Rivals.com last week that he asked Meyer about Florida's cornerback position, which seems set with rising junior Joe Haden and rising sophomore Janoris Jenkins coming off stellar seasons. "With their situation at corner, I asked him if I would play there, and he wasn't sure about it with a freshman and sophomore already there," Reid told Rivals.com.

Meyer had to expect to lose at least one recruit because of the Gators' hefty depth chart. Three days before Florida faced Oklahoma in the BCS title game, Meyer complained that opposing coaches were using the Gators' depth chart against them in recruiting. These comments came Jan. 5, only days after Reid reopened his recruitment, so the vitriol is pretty fresh.

"What we're hearing now is 'You can't play there, because there are too many players' and the one thing about it, when we recruited Percy Harvin not one time did he ask me how many receivers did we have," Meyer said. "[Tim] Tebow wasn't concerned who the other quarterbacks were. There are some players that would rather go somewhere and start and go to bad bowl games and not play in a game like this. There are other players that would like to go to an Oklahoma or a USC. Those are the kind of players we like."

More maps

If you killed some down time at work perusing the maps in our State of Recruiting project, you should check out MapGameDay.com. Besides recruiting maps for the most recent year -- 2009 will be up and running soon -- Webmaster Richard Crout provides fans with links to satellite images of stadiums and 3-D virtual stadium tours using Google Earth. Also, be sure to check out the extensive away game data, which charts a decade's worth of away games for each school. Now, Pac-10 fans will have empirical data to back their argument that most SEC teams have horrible out-of-conference schedules.