It goes without saying how important recruiting is in college football. Player development does matter a lot, but the teams winning championships in college football are always the teams at the top of the recruiting rankings every season. So if Georgia football wants to remain at the top of the sport, then they need to continue recruiting at a high level.
Thankfully Kirby Smart has been able to do just that in recent years. Georgia has signed a top two recruiting class in the country for three years in a row, including this past recruiting class that finished at No. 2 behind Texas. So UGA clearly is doing what they need to do to remain at the top of the college football world.
However, Georgia does have a lot of competition to be the best program on the recruiting trail. Georgia fans are probably used to Alabama being the program challenging UGA the most as the Tide for years dominated the recruiting scene. But that has changed in recent years as Georgia's new biggest competitor might not be a team you expect.
Oregon Ducks are here to stay
The one team that Georgia continues to run into on the recruiting trail is the Oregon Ducks. Oregon is coming off one of their best seasons in program history as they were the only team to enter the College Football Playoff at 13-0 before losing in the Rose Bowl to Ohio State.
The Ducks are using this on field momentum as well as one of the strongest NIL programs in the country to create chaos on the recruiting trail, specifically for Georgia. The greatest example of this is in the recruitments for the top three players in the country on the 247Sports composite rankings. Those players are offensive tackles Jackson Cantwell and Immanuel Iheanacho as well as quarterback Jared Curtis.
Georgia is recruiting all three of these players extremely hard and they have even made the top lists for all three players as well. But Oregon is right there with Georgia as well and some recruiting experts think the Ducks could even be the current leaders for all three players.
Time will tell if Oregon is actually able to win these recruitments or not, but the Ducks are a program that Georgia fans should pay very close attention to even if they are in a different conference. Oregon will continue to be a team that competes for National Championships, but they are also a team that will continue to challenge Georgia for all of the top recruits in the country as well.