Georgia continues to feed off Penn State's firing of James Franklin

Penn State firing head coach James Franklin this week has been great for Georgia's recruiting efforts. Many of the Nittany Lions elite commits have decommitted from Penn State and reopened their recruitments already, and Georgia is doing everything they can to take advantage of that.

While Georgia is targeting a few different former Penn State commits, there is a new running back who just named Georgia one of their top schools.

Georgia named top school for 4-star Penn State decommit

Messiah Mickens is a four-star running back who is the No. 160 overall player in the country, according to the 247Sports composite rankings. Mickens also is the No. 13 running back in the 2026 recruiting class as well as the No. 3 overall player from his home state of Pennsylvania as well.

Mickens is one of the many recruits who recently decommitted from Penn State. And almost immediately after decommitting from the Nittany Lions he announced seven schools that stand out to him which included Georgia. Mickens also named Ohio State, Missouri, South Carolina, Miami (FL), Rutgers and Syracuse as the other six schools who are standing out to him as well.

Mickens recruitment is going to move fast since he is in the 2026 class. There also doesn't appear to be a leader yet since Penn State was the only official visit he took this summer, so at this point it's impossible to know who his top school is. But he will likely start taking visits right away, so that will be a good indication on who his top schools are right now.

Georgia currently has one running back committed to their 2026 recruiting class. It is never a bad idea to take two running backs in each cycle, but that is especially the case for Georgia this year as their one running back commit is no longer playing high school football.

So the hope is that Mickens will announce a visit to Georgia very soon, that way the Bulldogs have some hope that they can win this recruitment.