The college football calendar is about to flip to March which means spring ball is getting ready to take center stage. But even if spring ball will be the talk of the town, recruiting is still just as important.
Georgia has a lot of recruits they are aggressively pursuing, and many of those players unsurprisingly are ranked very high. But one “major” target of Georgia saw a massive increase in their ranking thanks to Rivals’ most recent update.
MAJOR UGA target https://t.co/k2vteH1EDH
— Rusty Mansell (@RustyMansell_) February 24, 2026
Elite safety Jordan Aparicio-Bailey is becoming more important for Georgia to land
Jayden Aparicio-Bailey is a four-star safety from Alabama. He has always been regarded as one of the top recruits in the country, but his ranking just saw a massive increase on Rivals. The recruiting site released their new rankings on Monday, and Aparicio-Bailey shot all the way up to No. 79.
The above graphic shows that 247Sports and ESPN don't even have him ranked yet, but that will likely change soon.
Aparicio-Bailey took a visit to Georgia at the end of January to check out the Bulldogs before a recruiting dead period. He still has not announced who his top programs are, but after this visit it became clear that Georgia is in that group.
Aparicio-Bailey isn't the only Georgia target who shot up Rivals new rankings on Monday. Four-star linebacker Joakim Gouda, who is an in-state recruit, was named the new No. 30 player in the country. And to make that news even better he was just predicted by two recruiting experts to commit to Georgia as well.
Aparicio-Bailey has not been predicted to commit to any school yet, but there is a good chance Georgia is his No. 1 school right now. Only time will tell if that is actually the case, but the Bulldogs are in a great position to land one of the top recruits in the country.