Recruiting is the life blood of college football, and during Kirby Smart's decade as head coach, Georgia has always been at or near the top of the recruiting rankings. But the 2027 class is off to a slow start, and it could have Georgia fans concerned.
There's still a long way to go for the 2027 recruiting class, but Kirby Smart is off to an inauspicious start, having whiffed on a number of top recruits in the early going. Smart's refusal to follow the lemmings into the sea of wasted NIL money has produced some mixed results.
Things could turn around in a hurry, especially if some current predictions come true, but right now the Bulldogs are ranked in unfamiliar territory, sitting 31st according the 247's current composite rankings. Worse than the ranking itself is a short list of programs that Georgia has no business falling behind, ever.
Georgia isn't used to sitting behind these programs when it comes to football recruiting.
While there are some familiar names in the current Top 25, the list of schools that really jump out as "how the hell did this school land these guys?" is ever-growing.
West Virginia sitting at No. 29, two spots ahead of Georgia is the first oddity. The Mountaineers have been a middling to a bottom-of-the-barrel Big 12 program over the past few seasons, and since returning to the scene of his biggest success in 2025, head coach Rich Rodriguez has done little to change that.
Scanning up the rankings to No. 21 we find ... Syracuse? Seriouslly? Fran Brown is in his third season as head coach and thus far has produced mixed results. How a team who went 1-7 in the ACC last year is attracting any talent, less yet 12 commits already, is perplexing. Truthfully, this ranking will probably drop sooner rather than later, as the Orange have zero 4 or 5-star recruits.
Sitting right above Syracuse at No. 20 is Cal. Perhaps the move to the ACC is benefitting them, or maybe it's just big money being thrown around, but a pedestrian program landing four 4-star commits already is a sign that the system is indeed broken.
Another Pac-12 transplant reaping big recruiting dividends is UCLA. There's no other explanation other than big money for the Bruins having ten 4-star players committed and a recruiting ranking of No. 6. This was one of the most dysfunctional programs in all of college football for a few years, and suddenly recruits view UCLA as Elysium.
West Virginia, Syracuse, Cal, and UCLA are symptomatic of the issues facing college sports.
In truth, the jury is still out on whether "buying top players" is an effective strategy for winning titles. Thus far, no program that has spent with reckless abandon (looking at you, Texas Tech) has come away hoisting the Dr. Pepper trophy at the end of the season.
Even Indiana's anomoly of a season can't be attributed to cash outlay, as their reported $13.6 million NIL investment (12th nationally) wasn't even close to some of the big spenders in the nation, some of which exceeded $40 million.
The trick is finding that sweet spot, which Curt Cignetti seems to have done, between an outlay of cash and maintaining integrity in looking more for talent rather than payday chasers. This has always been Kirby Smart's philosophy, but the question is does he lean too far in the wrong direction?
The truth is, in a week there could be a column written about Georgia's gargantuan leap in the rankings into the top ten, but until that materializes, Georgia fans will probably need to keep clutching their pearls and hoping that this is just an isolated situation.
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