Florida players learning to pick their battles on social media

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Princely Umanmielen came across the post last week and couldn’t hold back. The Gators junior EDGE had to respond on X, formerly known as Twitter.

It was someone sharing a video of Umanmielen being criticized for making an inside move on a play instead of rushing outside. He clapped back with an FYI reply.

“You Twitter coaches are hilarious, I was supposed to do that. But let y’all tell it,” Umanmielen wrote.

The initial post about him has since been deleted. Umanmielen ultimately prevailed in this situation and responding to the video was worth his time.

He tries to be smart about picking his battles. Umanmielen, who’s active on social media, admits he hasn’t been better about blocking out invalid criticism.

“Not much. I try,” he said. “I’m learning. It’s really hard because it’s not like I just want to, you feel me, go at people. I feel like I have to be defending myself sometimes because people looking with a blind eye. … Predominantly it’s just Twitter coaches. They see something that they think is wrong. And the whole time, it’s somebody was supposed to do that, and they think it’s wrong.

“That’s mainly when I do (reply). Somebody will say something when they don’t understand the assignment. I’ll go inside and they’ll be like, ‘What is Princely doing? He’s supposed to be outside.’ I’ll be like, ‘I was supposed to do that.’ So, that’s mainly the only time. I’m not going to respond to somebody saying he sucks, things like that.”

Mark Hocke, Florida’s associate head coach and director of strength and conditioning, has been trying to help Umanmielen with social media. One quote he shared with him was, “lions don’t concern themselves with the opinions of sheep.”

“Coach Hocke, I love him. He really tries to talk to me about it,” Umanmielen said. “I really been trying to work at it. Even though it does look like I’m not a little bit, like, there’s more stuff that I see that I don’t respond to, more than stuff that I do respond to.”

Twitter troll tricks Ricky Pearsall

It’s not just “Twitter coaches” that players have to tune out. They also can’t fall victim to the Twitter trolls — as Gators receiver Ricky Pearsall did on Sunday.

At the end of Florida-Georgia game, an Australian immigrant and right-wing Twitter personality named Nick Adams — who periodically posts about Tim Tebow — fired off a tweet calling for Florida redshirt junior quarterback Graham Mertz to “take off the 15 jersey” because wasn’t worthy of wearing Tebow’s number.

Adams wrote “Sincerely, Gator Nation” at the end and Florida fans pushed back on his post, which received 1.2 million impressions on X. It also got a response from Pearsall the next day.

“Dear a supposedly ‘Gator Fan’, we don’t care what you think & we are rocking with our leader ONE FIVE, Graham Mertz. Sincerely, THE Gator football team,” Pearsall said in his post, which has 925K impressions and almost 900 reposts.

That’s more than 2 million views combined over nothing. Adams isn’t even a Florida fan and was just trolling the team and fans with his tweet about Mertz, which he confirmed to Pearsall after the fact.

Ultimately, it’s great to see him sticking up for his quarterback on social media. You also don’t want your star receiver engaging with posters such as Adams, who’s been deemed a satire account.

Umanmielen’s teammates, such as redshirt junior cornerback Jaydon Hill, have given him a hard time about going back and forth with X users.

“I walk into the locker room, Jay Hill will be like, ‘Stop talking to fans on Twitter.’ It’s something I got to work on,” he said. “I know I have to work on it because especially at the next level that’s all you’re going to get, especially criticism on social media. I just gotta tune that out. They’re not in our position rooms, in our defensive meetings. They don’t know what I have to do. It’s something I’m getting better and better at.”