In the Southeast, it’s Nick Saban and Kirby Smart, and then it’s everybody else.
From a recruiting perspective, Georgia is the Alabama of the SEC East. There is no competition. The Tide are quantifiably the only team in the Dawgs’ recruiting zip code, this year reclaiming the No. 1 ranking as the only team capable of topping UGA.
Georgia’s 2018 class unseated the Tide as No. 1 overall for the first time in seven years. The Tide rebounded to get the No. 1 class, but the Dawgs are No. 2. We know what Alabama’s doing is sustainable. It’s pretty clear that what Georgia’s doing is too.
But building a roster that’s Tide-level also means something else: they’re wrecking shop comparative to all of their direct rivals.
The numbers show that.
Georgia’s just vacuuming up Dudes year after year.
And if you’re wondering, here were Georgia’s tallies for the four years before Smart had his first non-transitional recruiting class.
2016: 14
2015: 14
2014: 13
2013: 15
Smart’s added an entire extra class’ worth of blue-chips over the course of the last three years to what was already strong recruiting. That’s a whole extra group of top athletes who won’t be playing for teams trying to beat Georgia.
Beating your rivals’ asses on the recruiting trail and on the field is how you stay around as a head coach. It is vitally important to have this feather in your cap.
Domination goes deeper than just counting the stars.
This isn’t like Notre Dame dominating USC in a recruiting battle, two far-flung national powers. Most of these teams are within a five-hour drive of Athens and play Georgia every year, like when Georgia swiped five-star WR George Pickens away from ancient rival Auburn on Signing Day 2019.
This is a huge gut punch for Auburn for numerous reasons. First, Pickens is a monster. He is a day 1 impact player that has NFL 1st round potential. He’s been almost unstoppable the past two years and is arguably the best wide receiver prospect in the class.
Second, Auburn was on the verge of landing the top ranked player in the state of Alabama (per 247 Composite) for the first time since Nick Saban came to town. Sure that doesn’t REALLY matter in the grand scheme of things but following a 7-5 season, it would have been some impressive pub for the program to land two of the top three players in the state.
It remains wild that Georgia is pulling this off. It’s just tough for any program to go from “pretty good” on the field or the recruiting trail to “elite.” Ditto about trying to Saban-ify your program. Just ask Florida and Tennessee.
But it’s Georgia’s world. The rest of their rivals just have to live with it, or beat ‘em at their own game.