Who Reigns Victorious in the Heated Fight For Top Georgia Recruits?

Every college football program need recruits in order to play the game, but college football recruiting is a complex issue that goes beyond simply signing players. There are all sorts of metrics for quantifying college football recruiting, but at the end of the day programs are concerned with winning football games.  In terms of recruiting this means recruiting the players that are right for your program and recruiting competitively with your rivals. This means that a programs ability to recruit regionally and against rivals is critical.

For the sake of this article, lets take an in-depth look at a notable recruiting battle in ACC country. The state of Georgia is rich in football talent, and Georgia Tech (one of the ACC’s stronger football programs) shares the state with arch-rival University of Georgia of the SEC.

First lets take a look at some basic recruiting statistics. On average from 2002 to 2012 U[sic]GA has had the 9th ranked national recruiting class, while Georgia Tech has had the 40th according to Scout.com. I take recruiting rankings with a grain of salt. Despite UGA’s highly ranked classes, they have yet to dominate on a national level, and Georgia Tech has been successful with their recruiting classes. Admittedly, Georgia has had more success in the last 11 years, but it’s not as if Tech has been a slouch either by any means. So why has Georgia had so much more success in recruiting the most highly rated recruits? Continue reading →