After some recruiting misses at the position, and seeing his performances at the beginning of his senior season, South Carolina’s football program dispensed an offer to Palmetto State and 2024 four-star wide receiver prospect Braylon Staley. Upon receiving his offer from the Gamecocks, Staley was spotted sporting Carolina gear at his very next high school game with the Strom Thurmond Rebels, conveying that there was at least some mutual interest between both sides.
As the season progressed, however, there never seemed to be any publicly known and tangible progress. Earlier this week, Gamecock wide receivers coach Justin Stepp conducted an in-home visit with Staley and his family, generating some buzz on social media. Despite the staff’s best efforts, it appears as if Braylon has solidified his commitment to the Volunteers, as on Friday afternoon, made his intentions clear that he will sign national letter of intent with Tennessee.
started his first full season at Tennessee with a shaky performance in the season opener against Virginia before becoming a reliable part of the special-teams battery for the Vols. The 24-year-old Australian punter reaped one of the rewards from his impressive redshirt freshman season in 2023 on Thursday when he was tabbed as Tennessee’s lone selection to the SEC All-Freshman Team. The honor put him in some elite company – the last Vols punter to earn all-freshmen recognition from the league was Dustin Colquitt in 2001.
Tennessee was a late arrival to the movement of Australian punters in American college football when it added Ross to its 2022 recruiting class last summer, and he made the move to a new country just weeks before last season started.
