Dan Mullen and the Gators recently went wild when redshirt senior ATH R.J. Raymond and redshirt junior OL Nicholas Villano were put on scholarship. So it got people asking why this never happened during the McElwain era. Well ... Former Gators QB Luke Del Rio dropped this bombshell.
Del Rio says it was because McElwain would sometimes quietly take those scholarships back from players. Del Rio explained McElwain’s alleged shady actions around the 7-minute mark of the video embedded below.
“This is not the first time that R.J. Raymond has been put on scholarship and nobody knows that,” Del Rio said. “R.J. was put on scholarship January 2017. Why did you not hear about it? Well, when Coach McElwain was at Florida, he would never do the, ‘You’re on scholarship’ surprise videos — whole team goes nuts. He would do these private meetings — and I would know because I walked on at Florida. I was a walk-on at Alabama and Florida.
“So, he’s put on scholarship, silently, like I was. The team wasn’t notified, nothing. Every half year … you are sent a letter — an official scholarship letter stating here’s what you’re going to get paid. Well, R.J. got his letter — and this happened to several people, all of the dollar values were goose eggs. Now, if you can think of a better way to more passive aggressively tell somebody they are no longer on scholarship, tell me. You’re a f***** coward if you do that.”
Why would McElwain take the scholarships back? Del Rio says it was to give them to other incoming recruits:
“They said they needed scholarships for a recruit,” he said.
The Gators open up at home against Charleston Southern a week from Saturday.