It don’t come easy.

Jeez, consider how hard is it to pull something like this off.

Here are the top recruiters of the internet ratings era (2002-2020), ranked by average 247Sports Composite class ranking. I’ve bolded the ones without any football national titles since 1980.

1. Georgia
2. LSU
3. Florida
4. Texas
5. USC
6. Florida State
7. Alabama (yeah, Bama had a couple old classes ranked in the 40s)
8. Ohio State
9. Oklahoma
10. Michigan
11. Auburn
12. Tennessee
13. Miami
14. Notre Dame

#16 Clemson, #19 Penn State, #20 Nebraska, #24 Washington, #48 Colorado, #52 Georgia Tech, #63 BYU, and #70 UCF have also claimed national titles since 1980.

If for no reason other than sheer accident, you’d think accumulating the most talent over a nineteen-year period ought to yield one title, at least.

What’s really galling is the lack of concern emanating out of Butts-Mehre over the years regarding this situation.  Or lack of awareness about how to accomplish same.  Either way, that’s some track record.

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About that quarterback competition

Here’s a serious question for you:  we all know Smart will treat the spring situation at quarterback as a competition, but how much of a competition will it really be?

I mean, here’s a snapshot of the four candidates:

• A graduate transfer who happens to be the only QB on the roster with starting experience at a P5 program;
• A beloved underdog who couldn’t mount any sort of realistic challenge to Jake Fromm during Fromm’s sub-par 2019 second half;
• A redshirt freshman coming off brain surgery; and
• An early enrollee from this year’s signing class.

That’s far from a level set of resumes.  And, yes, I know that Kirby hasn’t been afraid to start a true freshman quarterback, but the first time he did that was for the notorious throwaway 2016 season and the second time was literally because he had no other choice.  Neither would seem to be the case for 2020.

As Dasher summarizes,

I know Smart said it’s going to be an open competition, and you’ve got to take him at his word. However, it doesn’t quite seem credible that, when spring practice is complete, we won’t have a pretty good idea that Jamie Newman is going to be Georgia’s starting quarterback this fall.

You can probably mark that down right now, but for the sake of fair play, we’ll let the competition play out.

Consider me stunned if it ends up otherwise.

I don’t know if I’d use the word stunned should Newman not emerge as the starter, because the most likely scenario for that to occur would be him completely screwing the pooch this offseason.  If that’s the case, we’ll have evidence he’s not ready for prime time early on.  Were that to happen, I’d be more disappointed than stunned.  And more than a little worried about Georgia’s Plan B in that situation.

Your thoughts?

Show me already.

It may be churlish of me to say this, but I can’t help but be skeptical of any list of Georgia players looking to break out in spring practice that includes Kearis Jackson and Matt Landers.  I mean, weren’t we hearing pretty much the same tune a year ago?

Speaking of gaps

That word seems to be all the rage at The Athletic.  Here’s their Tennessee beat writer explaining SEC reality to a Vol fan hoping for a level playing field by 2022 ($$):

As for the big picture, my main question is if they can get over the gigantic humps that aren’t going anywhere in the SEC. Tennessee does, in a lot of ways, the same kinds of things Alabama and Georgia do. Alabama’s offense got a lot more wide-open the past few years than Tennessee’s, but part of that may be because of quarterback play. Georgia hiring Todd Monken as offensive coordinator could be a game-changer. All three teams run pretty similar defensive schemes that are built around a 3-4 but adjust according to annual personnel and situations.

Tennessee wants to reclaim its spot as a blue blood in the sport. That means reaching that level and beating those teams with relative regularity.

Average 247Sports Composite class rank from 2018-20:

• Georgia: 1.3 nationally, 1.3 in SEC.
• Alabama: 2.7 nationally, 2.0 in SEC
• Tennessee: 14.7 nationally, 7.33 in SEC

That’s a fundamental problem and a very big gap.

Indeed.

Ubben sees only two ways to close it.  One, UT’s recruiting rises to the same level as the other two programs’, something that should already be happening if Pruitt was on track to do so.  [Narrator’s voice:  It hasn’t.]  Two, changing offensive coordinators or other ways the program operates.  Given that the Vols have made Jim Chaney the conference’s highest paid OC and that Pruitt comes straight off the Nick Saban coaching tree, that seems highly unlikely.

In other words, in the SEC East, gaps are a beyotch right now.

Your Daily Gator and the “g” word

Back to Mandel again.  His list of top 25 coaches ($$) has Kirby Smart checking in at number five and Dan Mullen behind at eight… with a qualifier:

Admittedly, the gap between Smart’s Georgia juggernaut and Mullen’s budding program may still be wider than these rankings reflect.

Ah, but is it closing?

A little Dawg porn for a Thursday morning

Bruce Feldman, who’s a pretty sober pundit as things go, is fairly positive about a certain team from Athens, Georgia ($$).

The hunch here is Georgia may be primed for a national title run with the addition of offensive coordinator Todd Monken (I’m high on that move) and Wake Forest transfer QB Jamie Newman in a year when both Alabama and LSU have to replace their star quarterbacks.

I’m down with that.

There’s deep. Then there’s Georgia’s linebackers.

Jake Rowe says Kirby Smart has the equivalent of a first-world problem with his linebacking corps this season.

What we don’t know: How is the coaching staff going to get everyone who is talented enough to play a chance to play? How is the coaching staff going to keep everyone happy? That may sound like a bit much, but it’s absolutely true.

Sounds rough.

Postcard from Montana

Imagine how different a take Mandel would have had about the Montana Project if he’d included this from the beginning ($$):

What is your favorite college football mascot? And your favorite live college football mascot? — Alec B.

… If we’re talking FBS football only, my top three are all live animals — Bevo, Uga and Mike the Tiger.

Just sayin’.