GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The Urban Meyer era at Florida remains one of the most intriguing stories in the past few decades in college football even now, nearly 10 years after Meyer's departure and even after his retirement as a college football coach.

On Wednesday, former South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia revealed a -- let's say very odd -- recruiting pitch by Meyer when he was the coach at Florida.

Meyer, of course, recruited two eventual Heisman Trophy winning quarterbacks during his time with the Gators. But even as terrific as a recruiter as he was, he had some misses. Garcia among them.

On the Saturday Down South Podcast, Garcia shared a rather pushy recruiting pitch from Meyer when he was on UF's campus visiting on a game weekend.

"He did say some pretty interesting stuff, though, when I went up there," Garcia said. "So we went to a game, I forgot who they played. It might have been South Carolina, actually. I went up there with a couple of my buddies and my older brother, who was playing at Harvard at the time, and one of his old high school teammates. And his high school teammate was a black dude.

"So we went up there and after the game we were kind of shooting the sh** with Urban Meyer kind of in like the conference room. He's sitting there talking and we're just kind of chit-chatting and all the sudden he goes, 'All right, Stephen, I'm going to say something right now and this may offend some people.'"

Garcia took a moment or two to build some suspense as he continued with the story. Mind you, he ultimately ended up at South Carolina, spurning the school two hours north of his Tampa home.

"My brother's old teammate was the only black guy in the room," Garcia continued. "So I'm like, 'What the hell is this guy about to say?' And he's like, 'Yeah, Stephen, this is going to be offensive to some people.' And I was like, 'Oh God.' I thought he was about to say some racial stuff or something."

Instead, Meyer managed to catch Garcia and everyone else in the room even more off-guard.

"He kind of just looks at me and he goes, 'You've got to stop being such a f****** p**** and just commit to Florida,'" Garcia said, still seemingly in disbelief at the exchange.

Wrapping up the story, Garcia shared his response when that happened.

"I kind of looked at him and everybody just kind of looked at me with their jaws on the floor, like, 'what are you going to do?' or 'What are you going to say?'" he said. "I just looked at Urban dead in the eye and I was like, 'Excuse me, what? What the hell are you... is that... what? What's going on, man? I'm not coming here, are you sh****** me?'"

Garcia, of course, eventually signed with former Florida coach Steve Spurrier at South Carolina in the 2007 class. The Gators instead settled for Cam Newton and John Brantley. And Meyer won his second national title in Gainesville the following year.

But hey, sometimes even the best manage to get it wrong in recruiting pitches. Sometimes in pretty awkward fashion, apparently.