USC leads for Florida LB with big visit coming up

South Carolina emerged as the clear leader for linebacker Kenneth Ruff of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in early June. He will be one of the prospects on commitment watch later this month when he attends the Gamecocks’ social gathering of prospects in Columbia.

“They have a lot of love for me. They want me committed,” Ruff said. “I think I’m going to wait until my visit but I would say they still lead, along with Clemson. Coach Venables came down a few times. He came down for the spring game and he was pleased. That’s something I look forward to moving forward and I would like to take a visit there, too. I think those would be my first two official visits I take.”

While he last talked with USC earlier this week, Ruff hasn’t heard from Clemson since his spring game. He is, however, hearing a good bit from Illinois. He’s also hearing from Rutgers, South Florida and Virginia. But it remains USC out front.

“Seeing as how I haven’t taken a visit yet, I would say it’s a pretty good lead,” he said. “But anything could change. They hit me up on Twitter, they make sure it’s known that they love me and they really want me, so that could scare some schools away.”

Ruff said his mother plans to join him on his USC visit along with defensive line teammate Aaron Thompson.

One camp Ruff attended last month was the Ohio State satellite camp at Florida Atlantic.

“They basically had a coach from Ohio State, their position coach, along with the position coach from FAU, and they would run the drills together,” he said. “They were collaborating on everything and everything was done together with their recruiting and teaching us what we needed to know.”

Ruff added that, from a recruiting standpoint, it was more of a sales job from Ohio State, and Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer was there.