Kirby Smart has made his NIL strategy very clear at Georgia. He is willing to pay recruits and players what he thinks they are worth, but he will not go over the top with how much he spends on any one player, especially if that player is an underclassmen or high school recruit.
Smart discussed this strategy last week at SEC Media Days, and unsurprisingly it made national headlines. Some college football fans claimed that this means the game is beginning to pass Smart by, but when thinking about it more this strategy from Smart should work out extremely well in the long run.
NCAA’s salary cap will help Georgia win in the long run
The NCAA has released a salary cap across all of their schools that limits the amount an athletic department can pay their players in all of their sports. Schools can add NIL deals on top of this revenue sharing, but in theory this should level out the playing field.
So if this salary cap is enforced, teams will have to strategically decide where and how they want to spend their money. Do they want to overpay for a couple of the top recruits or would they rather spread the wealth to have a more well-rounded team?
Smart has clearly gone with the latter, as seen in a recent survey indicating the 10 teams who have spent the most this season. Georgia somewhat surprisingly was not even on this list.
The team that topped the list is SEC rival Texas who has spent more than every other team in the country. This might explain why Texas has been able to beat Georgia out for multiple five-star recruits over the last week.
If Texas is spending all of this money on the 2026 class though, in theory they should have less to spend in the coming years with future resources already devoted to these recruits. This is where Georgia will be able to get the upper hand because they should have more money than Texas to spend.
The NCAA enforcing this salary cap is a big if, but Georgia fans should be excited because even after not spending as much money as other programs, Georgia still has the No. 2 recruiting class in the country.