Blue Darter quarterback going west to play football

Burch backs off of verbal commitment to USF

The summer fling is over, and instead of driving down Interstate 4 to Tampa to play football, Demetri Burch will be flying three time zones west.

Burch, the star quarterback for Apopka High School, verbally committed to the University of South Florida in Tampa back in July. At that time, Willie Taggart was the head coach at USF. But after an 11-2 record in the 2016 season, Taggart caught the eye of the University of Oregon and took the job as their head coach. Then on National Signing Day (yesterday) Burch changed his mind and followed Taggart to Oregon.

Demetri Burch follows former USF coach Willie Taggart to the University of Oregon.

"Yeah! That's it!! Oregon it is," Burch said on his Twitter account. "Thank you, God. First off I want to start off by saying this is a and I have been living a dream ever since I received this offer. I want to thank God for blessing me and giving me the chance to live out my dream. I want to thank my mom for being so strong and making me the person I am today on her own. I want to thank Apopka High School for the support and making me a better person. With that being said, I am officially committed to the University of Oregon."

Burch rushed for 762 yards and 15 touchdowns as a senior, 1,117 yards and 10 touchdowns as a junior, just under 3,000 yards in his career for the Blue Darters, and led Apopka to a state championship in 2014 as a sophomore quarterback. At Oregon, Burch is likely to play wide receiver.

According to the University of Oregon football website, Burch is described as a 3-Star Athlete who can play multiple positions. He visited Oregon on Friday and de-committed from USF to join Taggart at Oregon on Saturday.

Along with USF, Burch also had interest from the universities of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Alabama.

From his comments after the verbal commitment to USF, it was clear Burch was signing because of Taggart.

"The reason I picked USF is because of the coaching staff," he said back in July. "Just talking to the coaching staff, I knew it was all about family and I know they care about their players. With all of the visits I've taken, the longest I've ever talked to a head coach was about 5-10 minutes. With USF, I spoke to their head coach (Taggert) for about an hour, and that let me know that this was the school for me.”