re: 2026 Recruiting Thread (3* WR Dallas Dickerson is a Dawg!)

It's worth mentioning that virtually all of the 2023 class has evaporated with a few leaving early for the draft and the rest washing out and transferring to some place they could see playing time.

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Nobody has the potential to dominate long term any more.

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Any system can, and ultimately will, be exploited. Someone will figure out how to buy all of the players they want/need, and then it will become a funding arms race. Cheating will also probably become a lot more rampant as programs/boosters figure out ways to circumvent any sort of payment limitations and hide the fact that they are doing so.

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We will have less quality depth. Teams will be older in general. Injuries and coaching will be more important than ever.

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Overall, I agree, with a caveat on the issue of quality depth. A lot will now turn on who can find and develop the 2-3 star guys to become that quality depth. So yeah, coaching is about to get a whole lot more important

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I do think UGA has a stronger NIL pool than the public perceives. Our roster is more expensive to retain than most, and retention doesn’t create headlines.

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I don't think so - Maybe for a D1 program we have a decent NIL pool but if you compare us to the spenders - I would venture to say we probably don't even spend in the top 25 spenders and ill list why

We lose just as many kids as everyone else - So our retention doesn't seem to be some anomaly where we retain better than others and we also when you see where most of the talented transfers are going - It's the same teams in on almost all that are considered to be players with a huge NIL bid going on. We are never in those conversations.

We've also lost players that were starting for us - that I'm guessing were bought for more than we were willing to spend and went to teams like Mizzouri - etc - Former 5 stars at that.


We were probably the last team in the conference to build an actual nice indoor facility to the point - everyone else was hard recruiting against us for our lack of facilities - this went on for years before it was finally rectified. That says to me - we can be quite the penny pinchers and not as serious about our sports as some other programs. There are teams out there that would have their coach's wife bang a recruit if it meant landing them and then there are programs like ours that don't want to play the game as much as others. Coach Smart has talked that they prefer to retain kids over taking transfers and I would venture to say those kids would come discounted over spending on what an open market player at that same position would cost.

Just an opinion - could be wrong

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drafted in the first round

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Andrew Thomas is still in the NFL and


GETTTING PAID

On July 26, 2023, Thomas signed a five–year, $117.5 million contract extension with the Giants.[19] The deal included $67 million guaranteed at signing and set a new NFL record for an offensive lineman.[20]

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Yep, it's clear to me that our recruiting is in decline.

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There are 3 guys in the top 15 (Curtis, Cantwell, & Guyton) that would have signed with Kirby prior to NIL.

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We were with Branch and Noah Thomas. I’m also sure the GT guy and Williams aren’t cheap, but I get your point.

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Hell, you have Alabama basketball playing former pro basketball players to win in college. The entire landscape of college sports is becoming laughable.

College sports at one time were get the best recruits you could get out of high school, develop them for 3 years and hopefully get the payoff from that development and now it's Free Agency on steroids. We already have players going to the NFL that transferred to a different team every season. I do agree we do fine in the current landscape, but our model entirely leans on high school recruiting while other teams' models have shifted to a spending model leaning more on the portal. Time will tell on which model ends up being the most successful, but it has brought some new faces into the spotlight at programs that have never won - because they have money.

We do get talented kids out of the portal and use it to help our roster but I do think Kirby prefers a certain type of kid which has led to a tough roster that can beat anyone but we have also shown some weaknesses the last few years that maybe could have been addressed in the portal but I also get that everyone in the country is also after those same kids to address weaknesses.

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There are 3 guys in the top 15 (Curtis, Cantwell, & Guyton) that would have signed with Kirby prior to NIL.

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Tyler Atkinson and Derek Cooper are the two that stand out to me. We locked in on both and our coaches had been sending them love letters and texting every day since the ninth grade. They were supposed to go to Georgia the whole time. Then they take one or two trips to Texas and decide to go to Texas. Those are the types of recruiting battles we'd never lose 5 years ago.

I think Jared Curtis might have been a perfect storm and not about the money. Got caught up in the Vandy hype. Their quarterback had just finished second in the Heisman. Hometown kid.

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Looking at the Top 25 recruits and not a single one commited to Georgia is just hard to look at.

Then looking again and seeing one that left us for Vandy

Then seeing the number one QB committed to - HOUSTON

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How many of those 25 will have moved in the next year? In two years?

It's all a circus right now.

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Pavia was a generational talent for Vanderbilt

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FIFY