New NIL report could be a bad look for Georgia

Most Georgia football fans assume that UGA has one of the most competitive NIL programs in the country. How else would Kirby Smart and Georgia be able to sign top two classes in the country for three years in a row now?

And while Georgia most definitely is near the top of the country when it comes to NIL, multiple reports have recently come out that indicate this might not actually be the case. The first report from On3 shared that Georgia was able to sign their 2025 class at a “discount.” This was then followed up by five-star Justus Terry stating that he chose Texas over Georgia simply because of NIL money.

So while the most important thing is where Georgia’s recruiting class ends up, it is a little discouraging seeing these reports. Thursday morning however there was another report that came out from On3 that listed which schools spent the most money on their 2025 recruiting class, and Georgia was nowhere to be found.

Is this good or bad?

The above post indicates that schools such as Auburn, Ohio State, Tennessee, Texas, Oregon and Texas A&M all spent the most money on their 2025 recruiting class this past year. Some Georgia fans might have hoped to see Smart and the Bulldogs listed here, but that unfortunately isn’t the case.

However, one could argue this is actually a good thing for Georgia because it shows that Smart and his staff are very good at building genuine relationships with recruits that just really want to play at Georgia.

But on the flip side, this could be bad news for Georgia.

It seems like NIL becomes more and more important with recruits with every passing day. Some recruits today think it is important, but they still really focus on relationships and where they feel they fit in best. But that is slowly changing as more and more recruits are only looking for the biggest payday.

So it might be safe to assume that if this trend continues then at some point every recruit will only care about going where they can make the post money. And that could be terrible news for Georgia if they aren’t at the top of the NIL landscape.

The good news for Georgia is that this hasn’t caught up to them yet, and these recent reports still aren’t convincing enough to make anyone believe Georgia doesn’t have deep pockets. But hopefully UGA can stay at the top of the recruiting world even if NIL becomes more and more important, because the last thing any Georgia fan wants to see is UGA falling back to the middle of the pack in the SEC like they used to be.