Florida is eyeing one of the nation’s top linebackers from the class of 2025 — McKinney High’s (Texas) [autotag]Riley Pettijohn[/autotag] — and the Gators survived his first cut on Thursday.
Pettijohn narrowed his focus down to 12 colleges, according to On3’s Hayes Fawcett. Florida will compete with Auburn, Colorado, Florida State, LSU, Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma, SMU, TCU, Texas and USC for his services moving forward.
The Big Ten program offers an immediate shot at a national championship compared to some of the SEC teams that are still in the race. Florida and LSU are both in Year 2 under new head coaches, and Coach Prime obviously has Colorado trending up in the Big 12. The Longhorns and Sooners will both be in the SEC by the time Pettijohn is playing college ball, too.
It won’t be easy for the Gators to win this race, but Billy Napier and his staff do have a good record recruiting linebackers at Florida.
Elite 2025 LB Riley Pettijohn is down to 1️⃣2️⃣ Schools!
The 6’2 210 LB from McKinney, TX is ranked as a Top 30 Player in the ‘25 Class (No. 3 LB)
Where Should He Go?👇🏽https://t.co/EdtV50nx72 pic.twitter.com/bwLNa5dsqb
— Hayes Fawcett (@Hayesfawcett3) October 19, 2023
The Gators last hosted Pettijohn over the summer. He’s likely to make a decision by next summer, so Florida will have to work on him for an official visit over the next nine months.
Pettijohn is a consensus four-star recruit, ranked the highest by On3 at No. 28 overall in the class of 2025. He lands at the same spot on the On3 industry ranking, which uses a weighted average of all four major recruiting services. Pettijohn is also ranked No. 3 among linebackers and No. 7 among recruits from the state of Texas in his class.
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