If you sell Coral Gables and the small country-club type of campus, you don't HAVE to venture into the city and still sell the perks of a city. You live on campus, go to class on campus, practice on campus, and are driven to the games on a bus with a police escort.
I went from a small town in NC to Miami and did just fine. I'm not a South Beach kind of guy but went about in Brickell, the Grove, etc. It's really being overplayed, IMO. People adjust. And as others have said, if this dude wants to be in the NFL, he and mom will have to adjust as all but GB are major metro cities.