Interesting quote from Richt explaining the rationale behind this year’s decision to sign a higher number of JUCO recruits than usual (more junior college players for 2013 than the last four recruiting classes combined):
“If you remember, we had some guys from the ‘Dream Team’ class that, you know, some DBs that ended up not being with us anymore. So those are guys that would’ve been ready to step into the role (as a starter next year with) a little bit more maturity. Since we had a void in that area, we wanted to make sure we brought in some guys that were a little bit older and a little bit more mature in their ability to play the game. But the other thing we knew is that we were going to try to sign a very large class. And the goal was to break up the class. [Emphasis added.] We didn’t want every single guy to be a freshman. We wanted to break it up a little bit, where it we’d have enough junior college guys that would be two years old older than the other guys in the class.
“The other thing that really came out really well for us was the midyear enrollees. Having 13 come in (and enroll in January) was tremendous for us. All of those guys seem to be doing extremely well. And that broke up our big class as well. We have 13 guys now, and we’re indoctrinating them the Georgia way academically and physically — and they’re getting a head start on football, of course.
“So now that rest of the class is going to be closer to 20, instead of 32 or 33 rolling in all at one time. We’ve got it broken up because of the number of midyear players, which I think is working out very well for us so far.”
That’s pretty well thought out… and it seems to have had its origin in the Nick Marshall dismissal. I’d like to think that if he was that thoughtful about the overall strategy for the class, he was just as careful in terms of deciding who would receive the offers. Time will tell, of course, but what I see here looks promising.
