It didn’t really come as much of a shock to Gator Nation on Sunday, but legacy wide receiver Vernell Brown III announced via livestream from his house that he has committed to the University of Florida. The news means he will be following in the footsteps of his grandfather, father and uncle as UF football players. The 6-foot, 165-pound Brown, who is the No.
3 player in the Sentinel’s 2025 Central Florida Super60 , picked the Gators over FSU, Ohio State and Miami. “The recruiting process is a lot with a lot of information being thrown at you, so just having that resource in my dad, he really helped me keep the main things being the main things,” Brown III said. Recruited by Steve Spurrier out of Gainesville High, dad played during the Ron Zook era, from 2001-05, missing the Gators national title season of 2006 by one year.
Grandpa played defensive back with the Gators in the 1980s, and uncle Vincent Brown also was a Gators football player. Even though, however, that he has grown up in a Gator family, and he was raised in Gainesville for the better part of his life, Brown III said it was not a simple choice of picking Florida for that reason. “Sure, I grew up around it and I was naturally drawn to UF,” Brown III said, “but I can’t say that throughout my recruiting process it was end all be all UF.
There were times UF wasn’t the No. 1 school. “Every last school in that final four, they were all the No.
1 school at different points in time.” Then one day, h.