BREAKING: Five-star Armondo Blount flips from Florida State back to Miami
After about a month of speculation, five-star Armondo Blount signed with the Miami Hurricanes Wednesday evening. The outstanding defensive lineman from local powerhouse Miami Central, flipped from rival Florida State and helped boost Miami into the top five of the national team recruiting rankings.
Blount joins a class with two other five-star signees - Zaquan Patterson and Justin Scott. It's the first time Miami has two five-star rated players along the defensive line in the Rivals era.
The South Florida talent initially committed to the Hurricanes moments before the game against Bethune-Cookman on September 14th. The commitment, however, would be short-lived. Blount visited Florida State for its game against Duke in Tallahassee on October 21st and flipped his commitment to the Seminoles. He also reclassified from the 2025 class to the 2024 class and boasts a 4.6 GPA.
"It was a hard decision," Blount said about flipping to FSU. "I was debating on it for a day straight just thinking about it."
His recruitment seemed all but over, but CanesCounty.com was the first to learn that Miami would continue its pursuit of Blount. Miami made an in-home visit two weeks ago, as did Florida State, and Blount was faced with a decision to visit either Miami or FSU the weekend before the early signing period. Blount chose to visit Miami.
The University of Miami offered Blount in the eighth grade, and other programs, including FSU, followed the Hurricanes in offering him a scholarship as a freshman in high school.
"It means a lot because it's a group of men who believe in me," Blount said. "I spoke to Coach Joe [Salave'a] and Coach [Mario] Cristobal when he first got there. I kept in contact with Coach Joe throughout the whole process. That's my guy, since I was in the eighth grade."
The national attention for Blount began when the then 2025 talent exploded in the Football Hotbed National Showcase game. In the all-star game, Blount had 12 tackles, five sacks, and nine tackles for loss.
Blount, only 16 years old, is looking to impact immediately at Miami. In his final season, he posted 58 total tackles, 19 for loss and 14 sacks.
Blount is choosing Miami partly because of the overwhelming success of former Central Rocket and current Hurricane Rueben Bain. Bain is tied for the team lead in sacks with 9.5 Blount feels he can duplicate the same type of production.
With Blount's signing, Miami becomes the fourth ranked class in the country. With four-star defensive back Zavier Mincey still set to announce and Miami in the race, the potential to be a top two class is still in the cards.
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