Florida football recruiting Top 100 for 2027: Hometown Heroes
Despite blowing up on the national circuit, these players have stayed home and will finish their high school careers where they started them.
It can be easy for a recruit in today's landscape to leave for greener pastures. High school prospects have always transferred in Florida, but it has never been easier to do so in 2026. The chance at more exposure, better facilities, tougher competition and even NIL opportunities make for an alluring pitch for athletes, and school choice has made the FHSAA's ability to police these transfers nonexistent.
Florida has a number of talent factories that pull in prospects from all over the state (some nationally), and we see many of the state's top players make the transfer year over year, even in the latest USA TODAY Florida Top 100 for 2027 . But not every player jumps at the opportunity to leave their local program. Today, it's almost an honorable decision to stay home, so we're honoring some of the top players in our Top 100 list that have done just that.
We're calling them hometown heroes — recruits who are finishing their prep career at the same school they started at before blossoming into nationally ranked prospects. Jamarin Simmons Godby WR USA TODAY Florida Top 100 rank: No. 9 overall, No.
5 wide receiver Simmons appeared in a handful of games as a freshman at Godby before a standout sophomore campaign that saw him go for 996 yards and eight scores on 49 catches. As a junior, he caught 59 passes for 932 yards and 14 touchdowns. He tacked on 25 tackles, six PBU, and three picks on the other side of the ball.