Four-star quarterback commit DaMarcus Smith has asked for a release from his letter of intent he signed with UCF last month, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Smith, who spurned his hometown Louisville Cardinals to sign with the Knights, has been rumored to have been trying to back out of his letter according to numerous sources. Smith never addressed the media about the situation, but he asked for his release in a faxed letter to the Courier-Journal on Monday, according to the newspaper.
“Today I have filed a release request with the University of Central Florida, asking to be released from my national letter-of-intent I signed in February, due to extenuating circumstances,” Smith said in the release to the Courier-Journal.
“I send my apologies to the University of Louisville and the University of Central Florida for this issue. And I would also like to apologize to the Louisville fans and community who have supported me since the day I originally committed to the Cardinal family.”
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UCF head coach George O’Leary expressed that Smith was committed to the UCF program back in February and also in a meeting with the media on March 17.
“I spoke to DaMarcus in person in my office in the last couple of weeks and DaMarcus is fine,” O’Leary said March 17 to the Orlando Sentinel. “There’s a lot of other things going on that people just won’t leave him alone. He has a big smile when he’s here. He left my office saying he was 100 percent with UCF. And a lot of the stuff that was transpiring up there — all the information was coming out Louisville, not Orlando. The kid made a decision that was a tough decision. As I told him to stand up at a Friday signing thing in front of all the people that just gave you the key to the city and to say that you’re going to spend the next four years of your career at UCF, it says a lot about the kid and the character of the kid. … He came down to see me about the whole thing. We had a good talk.”
Smith picked the Knights over his hometown team in a press conference on Feb. 4. He said it was a business decision for him to attend and play football for UCF.
“I knew I had to make the best decision for me,” Smith said at the press conference. “I hope people understand that I had to do what is best for me. It’s a business decision. I want everybody to respect me for my decision. It’s best for me.”
Once a letter of release is received, UCF has a couple of options. They could release Smith without any conditions, release him but restrict which school he could attend for one academic year or they could deny his request for release. The school has 30 days to inform Smith of its decision once it receives a letter of release. If they deny the release, the QB could not elect to attend another school till Jan. 2012.
As of now, the school has yet to receive a letter of release.
