Big Dave, the father of DJ Uiagalelei, is not going to stand for any disrespect toward his son. He threatened to fight a Florida fan who was talking crazy about the starting quarterback at Florida State.
That would be an understatement…
DJU will exhaust his final year of college football eligibility with the Seminoles this fall. The former five-star, No. 2 overall recruit has yet to fully live up to his billing during an unusual, tumultuous five-year span.
Uiagalelei began his career at Clemson in 2020 and immediately electrified the fanbase in relief of an injured Trevor Lawrence. He played his guts out in a double overtime loss to No. 4 Notre Dame and rallied the Tigers back from 15 down at halftime to beat Boston College.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming success did not continue in 2021 even though Clemson won 10 games.
Uiagalelei had an up-and-down season that ended with three losses to Georgia, N.C. State and Pittsburgh. It was not up to the standard that Dabo Swinney or the fanbase expected. The same could be said for 2022 when Clemson lost to Notre Dame and South Carolina. Something was missing.
Swinney decided to move in a different direction during the ACC Championship and sent Uiagalelei to the bench in favor of freshman phenom Cade Klubnik. That was the end of his time with the Tigers.
Although his numbers were not awful, there were glaring issues with consistency.
Those struggles continued at Oregon State last fall. Uiagalelei led the Beavers to an eight-win season that was eight points away from an 11-win season but completed just 57.1% of his passes.
Some of his throws were especially rough.
Oregon State’s head coach left for the same job at Michigan State. Uiagalelei hit the transfer portal, again, as a graduate student and landed in Tallahassee.
DJ Uiagalelei will start for Florida State.
The Seminoles are on the heels of a remarkable season that ended in pure disappointment. They went undefeated in the regular season but missed out on the College Football Playoff because starting quarterback Jordan Travis got injured and took all of the life out of the team.
Florida State got mollywhopped by Georgia in the Orange Bowl after more than 15 starters and 50% of the two-deep depth chart chose to opt-out or could not play for various reasons.
Enter Uiagalelei.
The former five-star prospect packed on a lot of weight during the spring and is listed at 6-foot-4, 255 pounds. He hopes to prove all of the haters wrong, of which there are many.
His father, Big Dave, is going to beat them up. One fan in particular is on his bad side. The patriarch verbally undressed him with a heated rant during a livestream on Monday night.
Fair warning – his loquacious language is not safe for work!
— – (@Spicoli_____) July 2, 2024
Needless to say, the Uiagalelei family is fed up with all of the negative chatter surrounding DJ. Especially his dad. They are not going to let it go unchecked. Big Dave in particular is standing on business.