Expectations for the Top Teams, and Recruits, Converging at Battle Miami

The first major tournament of the 2022 seven-on-seven season kicks off with Battle in Miami.

Brian Smith | Jan 22, 2022

MIRAMAR, Fla. - For a high school football scout, there’s nothing like a seven-on-seven tournament to provide multiple forms of valuable data. Photographs, interviews, those incredible videos that go viral on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and passed through text messages. That’s not all.

The seven-on-seven tournaments provide the paths to take with following leads and stories. Communicating with coaches, parents and administrators at the tournaments also allows scouts to focus on more specific off-the-record information.

Who the star players are really looking at for their college choices is the most important, and a tournament like Battle Miami will certainly have its moments for that type of information. Looking forward to it. It’s something that will be utilized to find out where every school in the state of Florida stands with top players playing high school football in and out of the state of Florida that came to this particular seven-on-seven tournament.

Battle Miami has teams from different areas of the country like Trillion Boys from Los Angeles, Sound Mind Sound Body from Detroit, and Dreamchasers out of Maryland. Combining those teams, among several from outside the state of Florida with the Florida teams, provides a great opportunity to see where top recruits and rising prospects truly rank. There’s nothing like competition.

There will be interviews with top recruits, videos of top plays, and overall analysis of the tournament coming up later tonight through the middle of next week. right here at Inside The Knights and at SI All-American. A few of the players that will be watched closely, among many are the following:

Jalen Brown, Wide Receiver, Miami (Fla.) Gulliver Prep - Immortals

Dante Moore, Quarterback, Detroit (Mich.) King - Sound Mind Sound Body

C.J. Baxter, Running Back, Orlando (Fla.) Edgewater - Certified Dawgs

Aidan Mizell, Wide Receiver, Orlando (Fla.) Boone - 24K

Brandon Inniss, Wide Receiver, Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) American Heritage - South Florida Express

That’s just a taste of a few national recruits that every school in Florida will likely offer and schools across the country will take a long look at as well. There will be numerous other top-notch prospects at this tournament.

What else are scouts looking for? A few points of emphasis, as high school recruiting has changed dramatically within the last year because of the restriction of sitting out a year after transferring once in college being switched to immediate eligibility after a transfer. The days of college coaches taking 25 high school players in a recruiting class is all but over. It's going to lean more towards 15-18 players from the high school ranks and the rest from the Transfer Portal.

With college coaches trying to take more players from the Transfer Portal, that makes them far more picky about the character they seek from high school recruits. They want more refined players on the field, and they want players that they do not need to worry about off the field.

As rankings are handed out in any fashion during and after the Battle Miami tournament, a major factor that will be considered is attitude, i.e. do players act like fools during and/or after a game?

Seven-on-Seven Players and Coaches Take Note!

Too many seven-on-seven tournaments have players that celebrate like someone that’s five, not 17. Taunting and degrading commentary and actions have consequences. Those players and teams will be discussed with college coaches first-hand. Not dealing with the lack of respect any longer. Those players (and in some cases entire teams) will also be left off this writer’s All-Tournament selections as well.

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