I’ve always been a little skeptical about the concept. If you have an offer and you want to go to the school, why stay silent about it? (Trent Thompson, the exception that proves the rule, differs.) But…
There have been rumors swirling that Kirby has a bunch of silent commitments for the 2017 class sitting in his pocket, cards that he intends to play as he needs them for momentum purposes. And maybe that’s what we just saw happen yesterday.
Georgia didn’t strike out completely in receiver recruiting Sunday.
The Bulldogs picked up a verbal commitment from Pace Academy wideout Trey Blount. Blount is considered a four-star receiver, according to the 247Sports.com composite, and holds offers from at least 27 college programs…
Blount’s news came a few hours after the nation’s No. 1 receiver in the class of 2016, Savannah Christian Prep’s Demetris Robertson, announced he would play for California over Georgia and Notre Dame.
Good timing. Blount says he was a silent commitment for a couple of weeks before announcing: “I have been silently committed to Georgia for a while now, since the Wednesday after G-Day.”
The truly impressive thing here isn’t that these silent commitments exist; it’s that Smart is evidently able to impose enough discipline on the process to control the timing of when the public announcements are made. Maybe that’s the best indication of all that these teenagers are buying in to what’s happening at Georgia.
Get The Picture 
“The truly impressive thing here isn’t that these silent commitments exist; it’s that Smart is evidently able to impose enough discipline on the process to control the timing of when the public announcements are made. Maybe that’s the best indication of all that these teenagers are buying in to what’s happening at Georgia.”
Think you’ve summed it up perfectly. Don’t think we’ll see much “Kirby has lost control of . . . ” because it doesn’t look like he loses control very often.
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It’s like we’ve slipped into the bizarro world. Having a coach who thinks details are important is unfamiliar and strange…yet very refreshing.
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No joke. For most of my life, changes in the program were always great during the summer and sometimes (Pruitt, e.g.) they panned out. But sometimes not. This isn’t just a “voluntary workout” or “the team is coming together” or they “are getting after it in mat drills” feeling though. Or is it? Am I just being a Disney Dawg or is this really different? I know I am as excited as hell and can’t help myself. I just hope Ol’ Yeller doesn’t die in the end.
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Sure seems different, doesn’t it? Come ye now September and October, and what shall be wrought?
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It was great timing. I wish Drob well, but it’s time to move on.
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It really is, as far too much has been invested in him already. Even worse, after his decision yesterday, his handler/brother said that it’s still not over and nothing is set in stone in terms of where he ends up signing. Absurd considering NSD is 3 months past yet they are still playing these games.
Besides, does Smart really want all the headaches of having to deal with his brother hovering around the program like that?
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Haven’t been watching at all once I saw he didn’t sign. But if the brother is implying the recruitment is still open, that sounds like bad news. I.e. “if anyone’s got some more money to offer we’re all ears”
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DROB could still end up at UGA but I never thought he wanted to be a Dawg.
We are going to be in really good shape at WR without him.
My problem Is I do Not believe Cal is academically superior to UGA.
Time will tell. Go Dawgs.
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UC Berkely is significantly better than UGA. they are #20 in US news vs #61 for UGA. If you want to compare business schools Haas sent almost 30 undergrads into investment banking at firms like Morgan Stanley and Blackstone, firms that don’t even recruit at UGA. At the MBA level Haas is a top 10 program when Terry is frankly a school not worth attending.
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As far as academics goes, UC Berkeley is definitely spectacular but lets not act like UGA’s business school is not fantastic as well. They have the #1 rated Risk Management program, #3 Real Estate, and have the largest percentage of students pass the CPA for Accounting majors. If we can’t get Drob because of the academics then that is purely his choice to go across the country for a slightly better degree.
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Didn’t we all kind of feel like it was going to go down like that? Like when a jury comes back within an hour on a murder trial…bad mojo. It just took too long in this case. California bound. I think it took DRob a long time to pull that trigger of moving that far away.
The Blount announcement was a “No worries boys, I got your back!” and it saved the day for some folks. I do get fired up when Dawgs WANT TO BE Dawgs.
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after Robertson’s announcement, Blount’s timing was good…I got a little caught up in thinking Robertson’s UGA commitment was directly proportional to the Smart/Coley/Schumann pressure applied…boy was I wrong…
the kid should do well at UC/Berkeley…it is a great academic school (Stanford Lite) and the Bay area is very scenic…I’m reminded of the old song…’how you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?’
you can do a lot worse than a free ride at Cal… 😉
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Who doesn’t love it? I lived there pre-Goggle when they spelled it Berserkeley
“Berkeley Goggles-A phenomenon unique to this campus, in which individuals perceive others to be more attractive than they actually are due to a shortage of actual good-looking people.”
http://www.dailycal.org/2012/08/15/the-berzerkeley-phrasebook/
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We need more Hardman types anyway…team players who are willing to help however it’s needed.
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I will say the mutual ass-kissing between Robertson and the coaching staff was sickening. “You and your university aren’t good enough for me but thanks for helping me drag this drama out for another couple months.” We’ve had enough moral victories to last a lifetime.
I was also surprised at how surprised so many were that he didn’t sign with us. Stanford, Cal, ND, Tech and UGA….one of these things is not like the others. A surprise would have been him signing with us.
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I think that people who were surprised he didn’t sign with us were just being logical based on comments made by him during the process. Logic doesn’t always control, especially if your comments are being made to manage a process. Good luck, DRob! Hope it works for you.
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you’re right, Georgia has FAR more African Americans than most of these schools, especially lily white Stanford and Notre Dame.
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Cal Berkeley, in a town where abnormal is the new normal
“Berkeley admits a huge number of low-income students — 43 percent of its in-state undergraduates received the federal Pell Grant, which goes to students with very low family incomes….
Unlike Douglass, Fajnor doesn’t think adding more special admits will get more so-called ‘normal’ people into Berkeley.
‘When Berkeley can figure out how to graduate an athlete they should be allowed to expand their special admit pool – or maybe even win a football game,’ he said.”
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/23/gov-brown-says-normal-californians-cant-get-berkeley-problem-some-californians-blame
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My comment below in response to you, jaboo
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One of them is not like the other … I agree. 4 of them have passing games, and 1 uses wide receivers as split out tight ends to cut block defensive backs.
I know what you meant, but my UGA degrees have done very well for me.
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Agree completely with you EE about the degree. The guy could get a good education and be set for life as an “instate idol” if he went to UGA. UGA grads dominate the state landscape in business, government, own/run many small towns across the state, etc., so he would’ve been set for life as one of our local heroes. Truly an example of not what you know, but who you know. Conversely, he’ll get a great education at Cal, but be just another guy among many out in the world. I wish him well and perhaps we’ll hear about him 4 years from now in the draft.
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Agree, Chi-town. Best to Robertson in whatever happens in life. He seems like a kid who wanted to get away for whatever reason … sort of like, Raekwon McMillan also from that part of the state.
On the subject of the degree, I hate it when even our people devalue a UGA education by saying it’s not Stanford or tech. In today’s world, a UGA degree is something to be proud of whether you end up staying in Georgia or going somewhere else.
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within two years after you graduate, your degree is worth exactly what you make it worth. A smart kid at UGA is still a smart kid, even if he didn’t go to Harvard or Stanford, or wherever.
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ehhh, not exactly.
the challenge is that certain businesses are not going to recruit certain schools and thus your first job is less valuable (all things being equal) than it would be otherwise.
This is changing but some traditions die hard. If you want to get a job as an analyst at Blackrock or Goldman Sachs, it’s vastly easier to get your foot in the door from an Ivy than it is a state university (other than a select few UVA, UNC, UCLA).
Thus a super smart capable guy from University of Central Florida gets a job in banking in Tampa, works for several years, gets his MBA at Georgetown or Princeton and THEN has access to a Blackrock
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This is the classic example i was think of : prestigious undergrad leads summer internship at Goldman (through on campus recruiting ) which converts to a full time offer in hand at the end of the summer and right before senior year. Kid graduates and makes 85k + 60k bonus right out of school then parlays that into a 200k gig at a private equity firm like blackstone all before the tender age of 25. That path is almost impossible at a school where jp Morgan or Goldman Sachs don’t come on campus to recruit.
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Let me preface this by saying that I’m a Georgia alum and turned down undergrad admission to tech. Neither school and i would argue no college in the southeast (duke and vandy might be considered) is the same neighborhood as Stanford. That school and the ivies have strong and deep ties to business and government that a Georgia will never have. There is a reason malia Obama chose Harvard and why Harvard chose her. It’s a self perpetuating cycle where the country’s ruling and business elite use schools as a filtering mechanism and a gateway to plum careers and opportunities. Opportunities that would be very challenging if not impossible to achieve even with a 3.8 gpa from Georgia.
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agree.
I have a friend consulting at Deloitte and one is an analyst on the street and both have said that those organizations give preference to kids from “elite” schools and pay short shrift to state U kids.
You can do it, but there’s not the ready made pipeline that you can jump in.
UGA has recently followed IU’s lead on recent grads coming back to campus to teach interested students how to navigate that system.
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UGA, specifically Terry, is very well represented at Deloitte.
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Deloitte is a bad example. 1) you have to differentiate between accounting( tax & audit) and consulting. For one most of the folks going to Deloitte from Georgia are going for accounting and the cpa route. Kids from ivies will be gunning for consulting roles from mckinsey, Bain, Boston consulting group, etc and Deloitte consulting would be a back up. These kids also will most likely not even consider the accounting route since while finance and consulting work you hard at least it opens up great exit opportunities and the pay is good as opposed to accounting which offers long hours and crappy pay. Most of the folks i know in audit hate their job and paycheck or lack thereof.
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While most Terry graduates that go to the Big 4 are audit/tax professionals, all of the firms now aggressively recruit from Terry for their advisory/consulting based businesses.
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You’re missing the big point, which is that consulting at Deloitte which coming out of Terry would be a great job is a 2nd more likely 3rd choice if it’s even on the radar of an Ivy league grad. Companies like McKinsey (of which some ridiculous % of Fortune 500 CEOs are alums), Morgan Stanley, and Google send teams on campus to recruit places like Harvard, Stanford, and UC Berkeley, they are not coming to UGA and if you’re at student at Terry you can have a 3.9 GPA and still face an extremely uphill if not impossible climb trying to land a spot at one of these coveted employers. Again there is a reason schools like Georgia Tech, Georgia, or Clemson are not even considered for the children of wealthy business people or high ranking politicians.
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Good points, though there is now a feedback loop between UGA grads and students to open doors on Wall Street (article below). I wish them well. I know some guys that went in the 80’s and said they had no clue what they were trying to get into.
One ironic thing I’ve heard from my friends in these jobs (undercover rednecks?) is that at the undergrad level, the preternaturally capitalist types at the Ivies go for jobs on the street and Bain, Boston, McKinsey get a lot more of the kids with the liberal arts or “international relations” type majors who don’t quite get that a “consultant” is not shedding insight on life skills but finding ways for a company to make money by squeezing every penny.
http://www.ugamagazine.uga.edu/?/issue/december-2014
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As Charlotte notes, difference in tax and audit groups vs consulting, which is what I’m describing.
Although b/c of Sarbanes Oxley, you see CPA’s in the C-Suites at a much higher rate than in decades past.
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I can’t argue with any of the points people are making as it pertains to your typical high performing undergraduate student. Having said that, my comments were directed more specifically to a marginally intelligent student-athlete (I’d say highly intelligent if he’d have qualified for Stanford). I wouldn’t expect DRob to be interviewing for I-Banking or consulting jobs after college, which means he’s now competing with your typical high performing undergrad for more traditional entry level jobs unless he makes the NFL. That’s where I think being an instate UGA grad with a very strong alumni network makes a huge difference for someone like him. I’ve seen many a mediocre former UGA football player land jobs with Fortune 500 companies solely based on the alumni network. Some parlay these jobs into wealth generating opportunities and earn a lot of money, but it’s unlikely they’d be given the chance if it weren’t for the way the alumni treat former athletes. That’s why I think he’d be set for life with his UGA degree and instate connections.
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To clarify by “typical entry level jobs”, I mean ones like a pharmaceutical sales representative with a large drug company, a sales representative for Coca Cola (see Frank Ros or Wycliffe Lovelace), working for state or local government or one of many other types of similar jobs that may not pay top dollar after college, but they certainly pay well and have a real career path for the right individuals (I believe Frank Ros recently retired as a senior level executive from Coca Cola).
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“Best to Robertson in whatever happens in life.”
Who can find fault with that? At least when all the dogs bark, he’ll know a tremblor is coming
“When tasked with retrofitting a national landmark that sits directly atop the Hayward faultline, ”
http://www.forell.com/projects/academic-university/uc-berkeley-california-memorial-stadium-seismic-upgrade/
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Thats the point Chi…. in the state of Georgia (or Southeast). Go outside that footprint and like it or not – a UGA degree is not thought to be on par with these other schools. And us just saying how great we are doesnt change that fact.
UGA has come a long way academically in the last 20 years or so, Id say #3 (4 at lowest) in SEC behind Vandy and FU (yeah I hate to type that but its true..), if we are #4 its behind Tex. am (Im not that familiar with their academics).
But nationally we arent recognized like these others.
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I guess Coach Shaw was right, some Georgia folks can’t get into Stanford…
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DRob’s thunder didn’t resonate very long. Kirby had a WR, from a school known for academics no less, commit within 3 hours of DRob’s announcement.
I assume Kirby had this in mind as a backup plan since Blount expressed a desire to commit. Hell, that’s not just attention to detail. That’s actively shaping events weeks in advance. This isn’t comparable to “evil Richt”. This scenario is nearing the status of Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime!
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I honestly think that d-rob is a me guy. Glad we did not get him. We will be fine at wide reciever.
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I thought DRob was going for an Engineering degree?
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