Has Georgia surpassed Alabama as the best program in college football?
Dan Wolken looks at if Georgia can now be considered the team to beat in college football.
USA TODAY
Georgia football is recruiting at an elite level and its athletic department is sparing no expense for the two-time national champions.
The Bulldogs spent just over $4.5 million on football recruiting during the school’s 2022 fiscal year, according to an NCAA financial report the athletics department provided Wednesday to the Athens Banner-Herald in response to an open-records request.
No other program at a Power Five public school has come close to that number so far for 2022.
Texas A&M is No. 2 at $2.98 million and Tennessee is No. 3 at $2.92 million, followed by Texas at $2.44 million and Alabama at $2.32 million, according to documents obtained by the USA TODAY Network in partnership with the Knight-Newhouse Data project at Syracuse University.
Michigan, at $2.24 million (or less than half of Georgia’s total), is the only other school to report having spent more than $1.85 million.
Clemson and Oklahoma, perennially two of the top spenders on football recruiting, have not yet released their financial reports to the USA TODAY Network. Neither have Virginia Tech and California.
Georgia athletics director Josh Brooks was not immediately available to comment on the football recruiting spending.
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What counts as recruiting spending?
The recruiting expense totals in the latest NCAA reports cover transportation, lodging and meals for recruits and school personnel on official and unofficial visits for a period that, for most schools, covered July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. It also accounts for phone charges and postage for pursuing recruits and the value of school’s vehicles and planes or those used by the school for recruiting.
The 2022 fiscal year was a cycle for a Georgia recruiting class that signed mostly in December of 2021 that ranked No. 3 in the nation and the spring recruiting period helped lay the groundwork for a No. 2 in the nation class that was nearly complete in December of 2022.
Varying athletics-department and/or university accounting systems can result in a lack of uniformity in how these numbers are compiled for the reports to the NCAA, but that is unlikely to cover the gap between Georgia and other Power Five public schools.
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Georgia consistently leads the way
This is not a one-off.
In each of the last four non-COVID-impacted recruiting cycles, Georgia has spent the most money on football recruiting among public schools. However, the previous largest gap between the Bulldogs and the No. 2-spending school was the $1.04 million between Georgia and Alabama in 2019.
In 2022, Georgia reported spending a total of just under $6.3 million on recruiting for all its athletic programs, including $515,000 on men’s basketball; $326,000 on women’s basketball and $127,000 on women’s gymnastics.
Football coach Kirby Smart has signed seven consecutive top three recruiting classes in the 247Sports recruiting rankings.
Smart set the tone for his aggressive recruiting approach when Georgia spent $342,118 from Dec. 7, 2015 to Jan. 29, 2016 after he was hired on air and helicopter charters which have come to be known as the “Kirby Copter.”
Georgia staff members traveled on some 140 charter flights that totaled $850,610 through Georgia Jet and Atlanta Air Charter during fiscal year 2019 when the school spent nearly $3.7 million on football recruiting. Another $83,260 was spent on helicopters.
“Time spent going slow doesn’t work,” Smart said in 2016. “We had to get to a lot of places in a short amount of time. We want to use every advantage we can to try to get to see as many kids as you can. That was basically the goal there.”
Georgia had 15 five-star recruits on its 2022 roster and 48 four stars, ranking only below the Crimson Tide in the 247Sports talent composite.
“Guys, if you don’t recruit, there’s no coach out there that can out-coach recruiting,” Smart said after beating Florida in 2021. “I don’t care who you are. … My family sacrifices so that I can go and spend time with other people’s families so that we have good players. It’s 25 percent evaluation, it’s 50 percent recruiting and another 25 percent coaching. But if you don’t recruit guys, you don’t have a chance.”
Recruiting staffs getting larger
Pay to coaching staff and football support staffs also can play a large role in recruiting success.
Florida has beefed up its football support staff under coach Billy Napier. It spent $1.64 million on football recruiting in 2022, up from $1.27 million in 2019. Its football support staff pay total for 2022 was $7.3 million; its previous high for this category was $4.7 million in 2018.
Georgia listed 73 people on its football support staff in its College Football Playoff national championship media guide. Of those, six had recruiting in their titles.
Not listed are other recruiting staffers who pitch in to keep the talent acquisition rolling.
That operation has come under scrutiny after two recruiting staffers were in an early morning car crash on Jan. 15 riding in a vehicle with two football players. Offensive lineman Devin Willock and recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy were killed. Another recruiting staffer, Tory Bowles, was seriously injured while offensive lineman Warren McClendon sustained minor injuries.
Brooks said the school and Smart are reviewing football policies to see if any changes need to be made. LeCroy was driving an SUV rented by Georgia athletics but the school said she was off duty and unauthorized to be using the vehicle at the time.
Recruits were in town that weekend for the program’s national championship celebration.
