Walter Clayton Jr. has become a household name during Florida basketball's Final Four run.
Clayton has earned comparisons to sharpshooting NBA superstar Steph Curry during the 2025 men's NCAA Tournament after splashing clutch 3-pointer after 3-pointer for the Gators in nail-biting victories over UConn and Texas Tech.
The Florida point guard did not begin his career in Gainesville. While Clayton has blossomed into a star in March Madness, basketball was not even the sport he was offered during his recruitment. Some of the best colleges in the country offered Clayton a football scholarship. However, Clayton bet on his basketball career, and it is paying off.
Here's what you need to know about Clayton's football recruitment and why he chose the hardwood over the gridiron:
Walter Clayton Jr. basketball recruitment
Following his sophomore season, Clayton made a significant decision: He was walking away from football, cold turkey. This was despite him holding multiple offers from major programs, including Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Tennessee, Notre Dame, Penn State, Nebraska and West Virginia.
Yet, the basketball offers were not coming in like Clayton wanted. He had in-state offers from Jacksonville and Florida Gulf Coast but nothing from the two flagship schools in Florida, Florida State. He and his mother even set up an appointment at IMG Academy to meet with basketball coaches to determine their interest level.
This was after averaging 17.5 points and leading his team to the Final Four as a sophomore.
"We got there, and they said, 'We don't have anything for you in basketball, but we'll definitely take you for football,'" Clayton said to FloridaGators.com last July. "We basically went down there for nothing. It was so frustrating."
Walking away from football was his way of showing college basketball coaches he was serious about the next level. Clayton then doubled down and transferred from Lake Wales to rival Bartow, a school that had sent Tony Bradley to North Carolina as a one-and-done prospect into a first-round pick in the 2017 NBA Draft.
"How many players can you name that have transferred from Florida to Florida State? That's what going from Lake Wales to Bartow was like," Bartow basketball coach Terrence McGriff said of the transfer.
Following his transfer, Clayton led Bartow to back-to-back state championships for the first time in program history. Yet, the offers for his basketball career still were not up to standard, with the ...
