Good news for Georgia and bad news for the SEC:
Georgia’s national team recruiting title was the 10th in a row for an SEC school, but for the second year in a row, the SEC’s share of the 100 best players dropped.
Georgia became the fourth SEC school to win a recruiting title in the past decade; LSU wore the crown in 2009, Florida in 2010 and Alabama every year from 2011-17. But the SEC saw a precipitous drop in the number of top-100 players it signed, mostly because of a resurgence by Texas on the recruiting trail. The league’s percentage of five-star prospects dropped for the second year in a row, as well.
In the team rankings, the SEC had just two schools in the top 10 this year, Georgia and No. 7 Alabama. Consider that in each of the past five years, the league had two teams in the top four; in four of those years, it had two schools in the top three and twice the SEC had teams finish 1-2.
My favorite part of that is Texas’ role in the overall decline, because Smart still wound up getting a four-star receiver out of that state.
Like I’ve said, in the short run, conference life is looking pretty good for Kirby Smart and his program.
Get The Picture 
Jimbo better get cracking…
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I think he’s off to a strong start already within Texas for 2019. The Herman-Jimbo battles should be fun to see play out.
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The instability among coaches the last couple of years has probably caused a temporary dip, but I wouldn’t expect that to continue. Florida, Tennessee, A&M and Auburn are all likely to move back into the top ten as soon as next year, possibly top five for one of them.
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i dunno. For all the cliches about things in life not being zero sum games, this one actually is. If Clemson and UGA are surging, life is probably pretty tough on Auburn and Tennessee.
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Perhaps, but they were in the top 10 every year but this one. We’re talking about a one player difference between one or the other in this case. It’s also a variable zero-sum, as the number of high quality players will vary from year to year along with scholarship limits for potential competitors.
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I should have specified that Auburn was.
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Sorry if I keep harping on this (can’t help it as I’m borderline fascinated by it), but words can’t express how good of shape we are in overall, and just how much both UF and especially UT are at their absolute nadir. I do believe that UF will rebound, but Mullen isn’t known as nearly as good of a recruiter as Smart. Mullen, however, views himself as a best of the best X’s and O’s guy, so I suspect he’ll fall back on being able to overcome any talent gap with his overall schemes.
Regarding UT, even if Pruitt ends up being a really good hire, he’s behind the 8 ball and it will take him several years just to right that ship. Whereas Smart came in with a #6 ranked class, Pruitt inherited one in the 20’s with similar ranked classes stacked behind it. Not good. And in order to keep up with us, Pruitt has to land top 3 level classes starting next year, which is an insanely daunting task for a program with limited in-state talent with a losing record in the SEC dating all the way back to the Clinton administration. Oh, and for SCU, as noted they will continue to do well in GA with 2nd tier recruits, but they just don’t won’t have the firepower to keep up. I will admit that Boom is going a good job there, however.
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Agree. It’s an epic tug of war between aubie, scu, fsu, utk & others for recruits in Georgia. Each winner puts the losers in jeopardy of a poor class. And Kirby’s effectively putting more than a dozen of the top 20 off limits.
Pruitt is a good recruiter, but he’s gonna have to put in a Herculean effort rarely seen before to land a top 5 class. Arguably his best recruit this year played for his pal Propst.
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I heard a whole lot of the ESPN Top 300 players signed with SEC schools.
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And don’t forget that Tech hasn’t signed a top 10 player in from Georgia in the last 10 years.
I just like hearing the sound of that.
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