Take a look at this thread:
Florida 2019 signee Arjei Henderson not eligible
247sports.com
I know that I shouldn't help the Gaytors, but here's the issue.
It is NOT that "Florida wants to be like Vanderbilt". I guaran-*******-tee you that UF doesn't have an Admissions Office that requires an SAT score or a GPA that is one-one-thousandth of a point higher than the NCAA minimum.
Now, some of the Gaytor signees may have failed to make the minimum SAT/GPA per the NCAA standards. But there are at least a couple who have failed in a different way, and it has to do with the APR rules.
Even if a kid can crank the test score and the GPA (and we all know about sordid ways this can be accomplished, by "retaking" multiple classes "online"), if he cannot be enrolled in coursework that begins to count towards Academic Progress TOWARDS A DEGREE, then he is likely to become ineligible for APR reasons and/or hurt the school's APR numbers.
In other words, you can just enroll a guy in a year's worth of remedial courses, just to get him to the point where he CAN take a math class such as business calculus. In fact, with all of the academic competition at good schools, it is hard to even find a Division I school that offers a bunch of remedial courses. A 30,000 student school like UF isn't set up to cater to 5 or 6 academically-risky football players every year.
So UF has to cut the cord and let those kids take courses at a JuCo or a prep school. Then they don't hurt UiF's APR numbers, and they can (maybe) take those kids down the line.
And I have no sympathy for them.