August 13, 2011 · 8:24 AM

And while we’re on the subject…

One other question about possible SEC expansion:  if Texas A&M does jump conferences, how much do you care about that move opening up the Texas recruiting market to Mark Richt and Georgia?  Considering the number of complaints I’ve seen about the staff not being sufficiently focused on in state recruiting, is that more of a bug than a feature?

31 Comments

Filed under Georgia Football, Recruiting, SEC Football

31 responses to “And while we’re on the subject…”

  1. Doug
    August 13, 2011 at 8:51 AM

    Not. At. All.

    You’ve already posted about how Georgia alone produces more blue-chip talent than any one SEC program would know what to do with. Adding Texas into the mix sounds like the dictionary definition of diminishing returns — a lot of extra work, considering that we’d be battling with Texas A&M AND Texas AND Oklahoma for the newly available talent, for very slight marginal gain.

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    • Will Pinner (@wpinner)
      August 13, 2011 at 8:58 AM

      I think it helps us by diminishing the interest Western division teams have in poaching Georgia talent. LSU and Arky will both have a much easier time selling recruits on their schools when they can point to games near their homes for family and friends to see. That means less roster spots on those teams that can be filled with Georgia students.

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  2. Bad m
    August 13, 2011 at 8:52 AM

    I’m not sure that means what ju think it means.
    I wasn’t going to go to Georgia but the fact that a totally different school about a thousand miles away is now in the Conf, hells yeah!

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  3. Ward Boswell (@Warden182)
    August 13, 2011 at 8:55 AM

    I read some post, here or elsewhere, that there’s a potential benefit in getting *other* SEC schools focused on Texas and a little less entrenched in Georgia/Florida recruiting so that maybe we can improve there. That may be unrealistic, but I like the idea of it.

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  4. Reverend Whitewall
    August 13, 2011 at 9:19 AM

    Honestly, I think LSU, Arkansas, and maybe the Mississippi schools are the only ones that are going to benefit much for opening a pipeline into TX talent. Perhaps the Alabama schools, but I don’t see them making less of an effort to get talent out of the state of Georgia. Unlike basketball players, by and large football players want to play relatively close to home (of course there are exceptions, but this is largely true). So I don’t think you’re going to see a ton of TX high schoolers now wanting to come to the states of AL, GA, SC, TN, and FL…..and the schools in those states are the primary ones landing GA high school talent. So I’m not sure how much of an overall effect it will have on us.

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  5. heyberto
    August 13, 2011 at 9:40 AM

    So we really need to play a Texas team on semi-regular basis (since they’ll most likely be in the west) to open up recruiting out there? I don’t think so.

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  6. Dubyadee
    August 13, 2011 at 10:42 AM

    It’s probably a done deal now, but A&M is the Georgia Tech of the Big 12. I see no gain for most of the teams in the SEC.

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  7. Go Dawgs!
    August 13, 2011 at 11:15 AM

    How much would it really open Texas more than it already was? We got Stafford wthout Texas A&M. Depending on when a kid matriculates, he probably wouldn’t play A&M with us anyway.

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    • 69Dawg
      August 13, 2011 at 12:18 PM

      +1 I think we recruit Texas like we recruit Connecticut, very little. This Texas thing is way overblown. TAM and Mizzo will help Ark, and LSU the most. Alabama gets who they want already.

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  8. Chuck
    August 13, 2011 at 11:29 AM

    Have no clue. I do think that if there is a benefit, it is outweighed by the road trips for the team (and fans, for that matter) during the season that this will cause. Still, we all know the landscape is changing, and I suppose this may be the best way to adapt in spite of the lack of greatness I see here.

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  9. W Cobb Dawg
    August 13, 2011 at 12:27 PM

    CMR just handed out schollys to 8 walk-ons. Not to mention a few returning walk-ons who received schollys previously. None of them are starters. If you add it up year after year, I’d estimate about 1 in 5 of CMR’s recruiting classes would be made up entirely of walk-ons.

    This year we had 24 of the February signees actually make it to camp. That’s easily the highest total during CMR’s 11 teams at UGA – and we still had 8 slots to fill on the 85 man roster. This is idiotic – somebody in this organization needs to learn math, take into account our history of attrition, and sign enough recruits to fill the 85 man roster.

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    • Joe
      August 13, 2011 at 12:38 PM

      You can only have a max of 25 each year anyway, so the best we could have done is one more this year.

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      • W Cobb Dawg
        August 13, 2011 at 3:11 PM

        True. Hopefully we’ve wised up and sign the full limit from now on. But we’ve dug one heck of a hole for ourselves by not signing more players in past years. I know we have a good history with walk-ons and handing out schollys is ‘the feel good story of the year’, but there are plenty of recruits out there who would love to get an offer from UGA. The O’Reilly (OL) kid from Marietta is a good example. Lifetime Dawg fan signed with auburn ’cause Dawgs never offered. Now we’re short on O linemen while handing out schollys to walk-ons.

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        • Mayor of Dawgtown
          August 13, 2011 at 3:32 PM

          Roster mismanagement at its best. It’s stuff like that that caused me to jump off the CMR bandwagon.

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  10. Careful Brad
    August 13, 2011 at 12:29 PM

    As long as Joe Shaad is on this story I will believe that it is not going to happen.

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  11. wnc dawg
    August 13, 2011 at 1:43 PM

    I don’t see UGA going into TX much more often than now. But I do think the Western teams will have more of a presence, and hopefully less time for ATL/GA. But I am not in favor of FSU coming in AT ALL. They do too well below the gnat line as is, let alone having an SEC card to play. Clemson would be fine by me from a competitive fan perspective, but not sure the suits would see it the same way.

    Question for you Senator: Why do you seem so incredulous about this going down? “(F)or the sake of argument that there’s real fire…” You don’t have secretive Presidential meetings and public notification of emergency Board of Regents meetings if there aren’t already flames. Now could it fall apart at the last minute? Of course, just like last year. aTm could be using every bullet they have to extract the concessions they want from TX, but with how the process is formalizing, that seems less probable. No deal is guaranteed until the signatures are dry, but acting like this is still just on the level of rumor seems bizarre. I am not excited about possible expansion, but looking at the lay of the land, odds are it is coming. Do you not think so?

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    • Senator Blutarsky
      August 13, 2011 at 1:56 PM

      Read the Pete Thamel piece I linked to. Right now, this is far more about TAMU pushing things than the SEC looking to grow to 14.

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      • Mayor of Dawgtown
        August 13, 2011 at 3:37 PM

        It makes no sense to go to 13 so it has to be 14 at minimum. It only makes slightly more sense to go to 14, though. It seems the likely move would be straight to 16 at one time but we haven’t heard who the other candidates are.

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  12. wnc dawg
    August 13, 2011 at 2:14 PM

    Agreed, and I actually had. It’s no slam dunk, and it may be a question of semantics if you meant fire=done deal. I took it to mean fire=very real possibility. I would certainly hope that if Adams/Mechem/Pastides are voting, they know the end game. It would seem absolutely ridiculous to me not to know how the total picture would play out, being how much it could effect the interests of your university. Perhaps with the time tables involved, that might not be an option. Slive has demonstrated repeatedly he has the president’s full faith. But who knows with something this monumental? Anyway, like i said before, it’s not official until it is. But it sure isn’t speculation.

    As someone who is not wild about the idea, I would be almost giddy when it fell apart thinking about watching the aTm/TX game from a distance. Talk about heated. We’d be in English Soccer territory.

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  13. Hobnail_Boot
    August 13, 2011 at 2:20 PM

    Somewhere, Jeremy Schaap is hiding behind a dumpster.

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  14. Cojones
    August 13, 2011 at 4:03 PM

    Bedides more of the country watching UGA and the SEC if A&M comes in, the kids learn more about us as they are growing up in Texas. The identity with your program is what causes kids to put us on their list to visit (Jordan Jenkins comes to mind). Name and program recognition is only borne from little beady eyes with impressionable brains watching you on TV through the years. You cannot discount that in recruiting.

    Yes, we haven’t ignored Texas(Stafford) to recruit the bigger names, but what about all those hs players who don’t have parents familiar with Richt when he was at FSU? The name, team and championship recognition of the University of Georgia would be enhanced and make recruiting in that large player market easier. We read so much hoopla about the State of Georgia’s recruiting grounds that we lose the reality of more populous states like Ca, Tx, Fl and some northern states having more material to chose from simply because of numbers. You can laugh at a player from Compton. but did you know that that area of Los Angeles has a dearth of great caliber football players on teams that would whip the heck out all Atlanta teams on a regular basis. Did you know that the Jr Colleges in that area have more students enrolled than UGA? I taught at one(El Camino) that had 33,000 enrolled students in 1988-89. Across the street from the school’s admin. bldg was the city limits of Compton. My thrust here is to acquaint fans with other population centers that we have great ignorance about.

    Made a reference the other day as to TA&M being between The Rock and a hard place. The hard place is the SEC and The Rock is the name of a Texas city with sizeable population and cutting edge industries(pharmaceutical and medical device , computer techs, communications tech, biotechnology, etc.). Raise your hand if you have ever heard of the place.

    My point is that population alone is interesting to have in our SEC and A&M has more to give than they will get.

    From a personal standpoint, I hope that my grandson in San Antonio will push down on the right hand of the animated Uga I gave him years ago and hear the same recorded song of “Glory,Glory to Old Georgia” coming as well from the TV set while watching UGA play.

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  15. Cojones
    August 13, 2011 at 4:20 PM

    Besides, let Chip Tower worry about “attrition” of players. We don’t have room for them all and want to compete in state for the best ones that fit our program. Texas is the only program that I am aware of that, year in and year out, will recruit only their instate players hard(and get them) because there is no pressure to recruit hard elsewhere.

    I think that it is great that Georgia state players have opportunities elsewhere. If we get most of the good ones that fit our program needs at the time, I’m a happy fan. Don’t pull this “But they are getting away from us” mind game on us, Senator. Hopefully, last year’s recruiting stopped that whine. We don’t need any AJC games on here.

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    • Senator Blutarsky
      August 13, 2011 at 4:26 PM

      I’m not pulling it. As a matter of fact, Richt just pulled in his fourth recruit of 2013 who will be ranked in his state’s top five.

      I just remember a bunch of people bitching about why Georgia recruits players out of state in the first place and wonder how they feel about the SEC’s potential move into Texas.

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      • Cojones
        August 13, 2011 at 7:14 PM

        Can’t believe those bitchers want us to throw some back because a Georgia hs kid wants to attend another University. They didn’t like AJ? Aaron or Orson playing for us? What was their conscensus of opinion regarding A&M? Didn’t catch it on here.

        Hell, they’re just bitchers, Senator. But you are well aware of that, aren’t you? Feel like I just walked up behind a cabal of witches stirring a pot and asking,”What chall doin’ here?”

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  16. Cojones
    August 13, 2011 at 4:23 PM

    Ps-thanks for the other reply. Glad it was received as interesting.

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