This week’s Recruiting Mailbag at The Athletic ($$) started out with an interesting question: assuming every school is recruiting at their peak ability, who would have the top 10 classes? Wasserman takes that to mean schools take care of their in state recruiting first, topped by some national success.
Under that hypothetical, LSU would be a slam dunk for me — a state loaded with recruits, literally no P5 competition for the Tigers, topped with access to East Texas talent is about as good as it gets. But that’s not the program that tops his list. (LSU is third.) This is:
1. Georgia: No team in college football has a better home-court advantage than the Bulldogs, and they have also proven they can recruit at the top tier nationally. Just owning the state of Georgia alone hands them the crown. Even if Georgia Tech gets where it wants to go, there is more than enough talent in the Peach State to keep Georgia No. 1 nationally.
Get The Picture 
And therefore . . . [insert gripe about Curse of Herschel here].
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Someone needs to explain this “Curse of Herschel” shit to me.
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Many of us believe Dooley sold his soul in exchange for Herschel. All the bad luck and bad breaks since 1980 are chalked up to the curse.
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No Regrets
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Uh hunh. Far be it for me to refute superstition. I don’t walk under a ladder because shit can fall on you from up there. You break a mirror and you’re picking shards of glass out of your feet for seven years no matter how well you sweep. Recruit the best football player of all time and win a NC and three consecutive SEC championships and it’s bad luck. A curse if you will.
I ain’t buying into that.
I will accept poor play calling, an unwillingness to adopt modern O techniques, sorry ass coordinator hires and retention, hatred of UGA by refs and mickey mouse employees, shithead administrators and injuries to key players. Not to mention playing in the toughest conference with the best players and coaches.
A curse? Herschel was the best thing to ever happen to the UGA football program. Stubbornly refusing to adopt a competent passing game to complement the run was the reason Georgia didn’t win three consecutive NCs. A man makes his own luck. Proper planning prevents piss poor performance.
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It’s a defense mechanism … no one really believes it 🙂
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I’m a precious snowflake and easily triggered!
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Now that was funny RR.
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Welp, that’s it…if RR self identifies as a snow flake then I’m cashing in all my stocks and buying a shit ton of MREs…cause that’s gotta be some book of Revelations shit right there…some seal somewhere got snapped…it was nice knowing a few of you…go Dawgs
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Well, at least RR is open minded!
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Ranger, at my age superstition is as good a a reason as any.
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I’m fine with this
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What’s funny and wrong about that list is that the Handbags aren’t on it. Is that because the media knows Dopey isn’t a great recruiter or that the talent pool isn’t there (no way)?
FU should be a top 5 recruiting school year in and year out, but I won’t complain if they aren’t.
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Florida, unlike Georgia and LSU, has to fight with two other P5 schools for in state talent.
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Miami is on the list. There is enough high school talent from the state line at Valdosta, over to Jacksonville, down to Daytona, across the I-4 corridor, and up from Tampa.
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It’s a hypothetical list based on teams maximizing in state talent. The state’s loaded, but loaded enough to support three P5 programs like you suggest? Doubtful.
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There are 44 blue chips and 66 Top 500 players in Florida in the 2022 class according to 24/7 (that includes IMG where many of their players like Nolan Smith come from out of state). Georgia has 32 and 46, respectively. There is enough in-state talent in Florida for all 3 to go around. The problem is all 3 programs have been in varying states of dysfunction since Corch left. That dysfunction has allowed Bama, Georgia, Clemson and Ohio State primarily to come in and take the top talent out.
Florida is a top 5 recruiting job as the flagship institution in arguably the deepest state for talent in the country.
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Which is why I’ve long said that the story shouldn’t be “Kirby must be cheating. Look at how they are recruiting.” The story is “look at how kirby’s predecessors under achieved based on this massive advantage.”
That’s certainly the way the world saw it when Spurrier got to UF.
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Just lost one from Bainbridge.
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OMG! And Kirby’s such a shitty recruiter…
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The 24/7 crystal ball still has UGA as 100% forecasts. I think we’re going to see a lot of this as committed prospects get out for visits.
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We did, and I understand the concern after that bear guy did too. But we aren’t gonna start bitching about Kirbys recruiting at least until after a couple of years of shit results. He’s got some capital.
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I didn’t b—ch. just got accused of it.
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And that, is why we need to stop making excuses for why we haven’t won a national championship in 40+ years and have only played for 2 in the last 40. Time to get our shit together and stop being ok with perpetual under achievement.
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And Kirby is a terrible coach! Oh my!!!!
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But then you have UF, Auburn, Bama, UT, Clemson, FSU, Vandy and SC all within a few hours or less to the border.
I guess that is the other side of the argument, plus you can’t get them all. Not always that simple.
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It’s the same argument over the decades…..
Look at the 1980 yard chicken roster (including a Heisman winner)…
Look at the hillbillies in the 1970’s, 80’s, and 90’s…
Look at the East Alabama Reform School from the 1950’s till now…
Look at the criminole roster during the Bowden years…
Look at clemmons roster even now…
Even look at the gumps even under Bear Bryant…
ALL LOADED with quality players from the state of Georgia!
Thank the Good Lord Kirby from Bainbridge has put a moat around the state!!
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Before MO, aTm, maybe AR, we were a localized conference where an 8 hour drive could get you to all of the different schools. That is not insignificant. I am in SC about 100 miles east of Athens and I can get to every east campus within 6 hours, leaving out Fayetteville and MO.
Would be a good study to make the East as it should be for day trips. This is what our gawd given conference is built on. The only East team that requires multiple nights out is MO, and we have to drive through St. Louis to get there. Yeah, done it more times than I care to (for work reasons). I stop in Paducah, then finish my route the next day. SHHH, I have updated all of the X-ray and MRI equipment at UMO. They do have an impressive horse hospital (large animal). 3T magnet, CT/X-Ray. Giving them a vascular lab room next month. BTW, the FU/UF vet center funded by Steinbrenner has BIG money, advanced X ray and MRI stuff for animals. My next task is in Ocala to do a CT for horses with a unique set up. Ocala and Lexington are the Horse care centers for the foreseeable future. Big stuff happening in X-ray and MRI. Also have done the same at Missy ST. Their large animal facility is on point.
I’m rambling, sorry. Bourbon at it’s best…..
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One more thing, in large animal hospitals, I can drive a forklift all the way to the “scan room”. In people hospitals, forklifts are only outside, human work to do the rest. I have driven 10,000 pound forklifts right by horses, including their trail of dung, but NOOOO, cant even look at people in VA hospitals/public/private. Hell, I have had propane and diesel lifts inside procedure rooms at animal facilities, and it is so nice for us. But, human facilities? No, it is all sterile dress and infection control is the enemy. ENEMY.
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Good point. If we could just run human patients into a head chute for treatment they probably wouldn’t pay nearly as much attention to the forklift idling in the corner…
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I figure with all the horse farts nobody notices the diesel and propane fumes.
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Cow farts are really bad for the environment
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Gotdamn hippie.
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