Protecting Their Turf

The mood from fans yesterday seems pretty mixed. On one hand, you have the fans who are calling Signing Day a major fail for Georgia. On the other hand, you have fans going out of their way to defend what happened. As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in between.

The fact is, Georgia did land some very good players, and particularly on defense, a lot of solid depth for 2010 and stars for the future will enter the program in June. That's good. And Da'Rick Rogers is just one player -- and maybe even one who has the old Nuke LaLoosh attitude to boot -- so his loss probably won't make or break Georgia's claim to future SEC titles.

On the other hand, I think there were two very big areas of concern, and both were addressed by a couple of commenters.

First, from Muckbeast, who wrote:

"Also, look at how few of the top instate players we signed."

And this is the one thing that bothers and concerns me more than anything else.

It seems like this was a HUGE year for GA High School players. Why did we lose so many of them? :(

Indeed, Georgia didn't exactly protect its turf to the fullest. We talked about this at length a couple of weeks ago in one our in-depth recruiting posts, if you'll recall, and yesterday's results really underscored what might have well been considered a concern beforehand.

Of the top 10 recruits in the state, according to ESPN's rankings, Georgia landed just one -- Alec Ogletree. Now, to be fair, the Bulldogs did manage to snatch up four of the next 10. And to be even more fair, the No. 30 recruit in Georgia is roughly the same as the No. 2 recruit in, say, Arkansas.

So to say Georgia landed just one of the state's 10 best recruits certainly isn't the same as saying Georgia didn't ink a lot of very good players from the state -- 13 in all, to be precise, and just one of fewer than three stars.

But there is something to be said for protecting the borders and bringing in the best of the best that Georgia's very fertile recruiting trails have to offer. And when you stack the Bulldogs up against the competition, it really doesn't look like they did too well and keeping their best and brightest close to home.

To wit:

School	# of State Top 10	# to other SEC schools
Georgia	1	5
LSU	8	1
Tennessee	2	4*
Florida	6	0
Alabama	3	4
Auburn	2	5
South Carolina	5	3

* State still has one uncommitted player among its top 10 recruits.

None of the big guns in the SEC did a worse job of keeping its top 10 recruits than Georgia this year, and only Auburn allowed as many to land at another SEC school. And, to be fair yet again, Alabama and Auburn were the only schools on this list competing with another SEC school within its state's borders.

Even if we look at some other top national schools, Georgia comes up lacking.

School	# of State Top 10	# to other conf schools
Ohio State	4	1
Texas	7	2
Oklahoma	4	2*
USC	4	2
Penn State	4	2

* State still has one uncommitted player among its top 10 recruits.

Again, the only school we've looked at with as much trouble keeping top talent at home has been Tennessee -- and the Vols lost their head coach just weeks before signing day. That's not exactly the company you want to keep.

And yes, I know the argument that was brought up the last time that Georgia has a lot of border schools hoping to poach the state for prized recruits. That's true. But it doesn't mean it should be acceptable, and this year Georgia had the double whammy of missing out on a number of the best and brightest and instead seeing those players go to the Dawgs' main rivals.

Oh, and speaking of rivals, that brings me to the next point that a reader made that seems to be one of the more salient arguments that there shouldn't be much joy in Dawg-ville today.

Posted anonymously:

We can spin it all we want but this is a day that I would rather forget! I ask one simple question: have we made up ground on Florida or have we lost ground? Dawg Nation needs to wake the hell up! I'm tired of the spin machine that is Richt and Garner on "they got who they were targeting". Give me a break..we got taken behind the woodshed today and spanked. All is not well in Athens.

OK, perhaps "salient" was too strong a term. But the commenter has a point. Did Georgia make up ground on Florida yesterday? It's pretty hard to make the case that it did, and given the fact that the Gators have two of the past four national titles and have beaten Georgia in four of the last five head-to-head games, that's a problem.

And when it comes to protecting borders, it's hard to argue that Florida didn't do it as well as anyone. The Gators have a pretty talent-rich state chock full of poachers, too. And yet, they landed six of the best 10 players in the state, and not a one got away to another SEC school. That's dominating the recruiting trail. And if Florida's goal is to dominate, it should be Georgia's goal, too.

And the bigger problem? Urban "I'm risking my life to coach you!" Meyer didn't just dominate his home state. He was pretty dominant nationally, too.

Another somber rundown: Florida pulled the No. 6 player from Connecticut, the No. 6 player from Georgia, the No. 3 player from Alabama, the No. 1-ranked players in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland, and the No. 1, No. 4 and No. 8 players out of California.

In other words, there were eight states in which Florida got as many top-10 recruits as Georgia got in its own state.

In other other words, Florida dominated California -- a state on the other side of the country -- far better than the Bulldogs recruited Georgia.

In the end, recruiting rankings don't mean everything, but they do mean something. And whatever that something amounts to, Georgia fell behind by a good bit of it to the one team it needs to start catching up to.

(Side note: Yes, I realize this was a fairly negative post, so I'm sorry to bum you out. I'll conclude then, with this note from Firebrand, which I think also offers some good perspective on things:

"What gives me hope is that we went through a lot this off-season. And we had a bad year on the field, as well. Hopefully this season sets us up for a huge 2011 in recruiting. I think the 3-4 should excite Athletes across the state to come play some attacking football."

Indeed. Anyone who wanted coaching changes had to know the risks involved.

What happened yesterday was, in part, due to those risks. But the future has potential, as Mark Richt said: "We’re very confident and trying to do the right thing. We’re also confident in that a lot of NFL teams and college teams are moving toward this trend, so we’re moving to the front end of this trend.”)