It was a special weekend for football recruiting in Athens as the 2019 class picked up pledges from top targets at tailback, athlete, and linebacker. The announcements came after “The Reveal” – an event to show off the new west endzone project and locker room to some of Georgia’s top recruiting prospects. The Reveal had its intended effect, and Kirby Smart was quick to thank the donors who contributed to the project.

If you build it, they will come. Thanks members of the Magill Society for a beautiful new home !!#TheReveal pic.twitter.com/WU69dLNPSa

— Coach Kirby Smart (@KirbySmartUGA) July 30, 2018

The weekend’s haul raised Georgia’s commitment total for the 2019 class to 16. The Dawgs have added six commitments since mid-July. That’s turned a solid core of a class into one that’s suddenly close to filling up. The thing is that the 2019 class isn’t expected to be a large one. The current senior class is fairly small (around 16 players), and even normal amounts of attrition along with an early NFL entry or two only get you so much flexibility. Jeff Sentell projected the size of the 2019 class at 21.

The number might shift one way or the other – they always seem to find the room to sign just one more, don’t they? Say it’s somewhere between 20-23. But the exact number isn’t the point. It’s a safe bet that Georgia’s class will come in under the limit of 25. Space in this class is beginning to become tight. If we use Sentell’s number, that means we head into August with only five spots available. Some thoughts on the next four months of recruiting with single-digit spots remaining:

• Recruiting news will probably slow down. There could be one or two more decisions before the season, but Georgia’s targets also include some waiting until Signing Day or at least the end of the high school season. Journalists covering recruiting will find angles to keep readers engaged, but we’re not going to see things proceed at the same pace with six commitments in two weeks. Other schools might appear in the recruiting news more than Georgia. That’s OK.
• The staff knows who their remaining targets are. They’ll focus on those few while keeping other options alive. Managing those few remaining spots will be the job until the class is full, and the staff can afford to be very, very picky.
• Will there be even less Georgia drama in this year’s late signing period? Georgia had a few but impressive additions in February to put the 2018 class over the top. With only five or so scholarships left to fill for 2019, how many will remain available after December?
• Are all of the current commitments firm? When you’re dealing with such elite prospects, they’ll be prime targets of other programs until the moment they sign. Georgia will spend plenty of time re-recruiting each commitment.
• Along those lines, will the list change for other reasons? We saw attrition from last year’s class right from the beginning. Whether or not Georgia encouraged those prospects to look elsewhere in order to make room for interest from a “must-take” player, it’s not unheard of.
• We know that even after the class is done and full this staff won’t stop looking for ways to improve it. Graduate transfers, regular transfers, walk-ons, and unsigned JUCOs will all be in play once we get a better understanding of the needs of the team after the 2018 season. The pursuit of those late additions will have to be as much a part of the roster management as the size of the 2019 recruiting class.

Blutarsky wrote last week that “what this reminds you most of is one of (Mark) Richt’s glaring issues, the ability to fix one thing and have something else crop up to bedevil him.” He was discussing an autopsy of the 2015 season, but the painful truth of that statement is that it applied across many areas of the program during Richt’s 15 years. In this context it had to do with the composition of the coaching staff. Other times it could have been special teams or oven who called the plays. Often it had to do with recruiting and roster management.

It became a maddening characteristic of Richt’s teams to be out of phase. If you only looked at individual talent, you’d rightly say that the team was loaded with blue-chips. That was enough for a very good 15-year run with occasional divisional titles and even two conference championships. But many times the best talent was clustered on one side of the ball or the other. Rarely did a strong offense and defense come together. The 2003 team had one of the best defenses in the nation, but the offense was middle of the pack in the SEC. A decade ago Georgia had high draft picks at quarterback, tailback, and receiver, but the defense was in the twilight of the Willie Martinez years. Things did come together in 2012, but they got right back out of sync.

Few teams are ever going to be completely well-rounded, but it’s beyond frustrating in those rare seasons with legitimate title aspirations and generational talent at certain positions knowing that inconsistent recruiting over a period of years at other positions could blow the whole thing up. It’s even more frustrating when you can identify the prospect or two who might keep a position from becoming a weakness down the road (or even turn it into a strength) and just can’t land them. We’ve seen that too.

Every year there are always a couple of prospects who emerge as touchstones for a successful signing class. It’s the nature of following recruiting to place undue importance on those decisions, but once in a while there really are such things as must-sign prospects. The ones that get away can sting for a while – recruitniks still talk about the trio that left Georgia in 1997 to fuel Tennessee’s run. But Kirby Smart has begun to add more than his share of these key prospects. Jacob Eason was an immediate boon for Smart. Not only did Georgia need an upgrade at quarterback, but Eason’s decision to stick with his commitment gave instant legitimacy to a risky hire dealing with a divided fan base. Richard LeCounte helped to pull together an impressive class following a 2016 lukewarm season. Zamir White kickstarted last season’s class after a sluggish start, but many fans considered Jamaree Salyer the make-or-break commitment that would define a successful class.

Travon Walker became one of those prospects for the 2019 class. To begin with, an in-state 5* defensive lineman is always going to be a priority. But Walker’s decision carried with it an unusual amount of angst that seemed out of step with the current boom in Georgia recruiting. As well as Kirby Smart and his staff had recruited, elite defensive line talent proved elusive. Derrick Brown was an early disappointment. Rick Sandidge would have made a nice addition to the nation’s top class. These decisions weren’t devastating because Georgia had decent depth along the line in the short term, and the arrival of Jay Hayes made things a little less dire in 2018. But those misses did mean that incoming players like Jordan Davis would have a little more pressure to produce, and they also increased the urgency for the 2019 class.

The relative difficulty recruiting the defensive line also increased the spotlight on defensive line coach Tray Scott. Fair or not, Scott was beginning to feel some heat as the defensive line became one of the few position groups not to sign a 5* prospect. As well as Georgia was stocking talent at other positions, the defensive line lagged. Georgia already had a couple of quality defensive end 2019 commitments in Bill Norton and Zion Logue, but Walker would be the tell: could Georgia land an elite defensive linemen with so much in its favor: in-state, a solid long-term relationship, and playing time at a position of need? They could and did.

Walker’s commitment checks all of the boxes in terms of what the team needs from a defensive lineman. Beyond that, it calms the nerves of those who think about things like the two-deep a year or two down the road. Could Smart and his staff avoid a pitfall with which the previous staff struggled? Neuroses of the Georgia fan base die hard, and the looming possibility of a key position once again holding back an otherwise loaded team was all too fresh of a memory. Walker assuaged that concern for now. He’s just one piece of the puzzle, but it’s a big piece that moves Georgia a little closer to the well-rounded roster they’ll need to remain on top.

I wrote earlier that SEC fans are still attending games, and that’s true in most cases. One area in which there seems to be a little softening is in the time-honored tradition of the visitor’s section. Of course with rabid SEC fans there will always be plenty of loyal opposition in the stands, and the one or two best games on the schedule will always be a tough ticket, but the phrase “tickets returned from visiting teams” seems to be showing up a lot more often.

Variable ticket pricing isn’t a new development – it’s been around in some form in the SEC for most of this decade. Teams have figured out the mechanics of charging more for premium (or just conference) games. Neither is supply-and-demand a revelation. When the prices of tickets rise, we’ll see less demand for them. For home fans, it’s somewhat more difficult to turn away. There are other things at stake beyond the ticket price – maintaining a location held for generations and the ritual of tailgating and a fall weekend in Athens make it tempting to swallow each subsequent price increase.

With the introduction of variable pricing for its home games in 2018, Georgia’s had enough tickets returned this year from opponents to offer a five-game pack to the general public for all home games except Tennessee and Auburn. Georgia’s not having a problem selling season tickets to its own fans (new season tickets require nearly 24,000 points), but many are simply holding their spot for the Notre Dame game in 2019. Visiting fans don’t care about our future schedule, and it will be telling to see if these packages will be met with as much interest by Georgia fans since they’re 1) not sold at a discount and 2) aren’t renewable.

It’s not just Georgia of course. Alabama is offering single-game tickets based on returns from opponents. We’re not talking cupcakes – divisional foes Mississippi State and Texas A&M returned tickets. We can joke about fans just not wanting to witness a blowout in person, but Alabama didn’t just become dominant. Alabama’s lowest ticket prices for nonconference games is $40. Prices for conference games are more than twice that, and the A&M game costs nearly three times as much. A sizable number of visiting fans are just staying home.

A related casualty of variable pricing is the visiting band. With equipment and larger instruments, a 350-person band can use well over 500 seats. Since most of the higher-prices games are likely to be conference matchups, the cost to bring a full band has skyrocketed. You’ll see fewer full bands and more 40-100 person pep bands in the visitor’s section across the conference. There will be exceptions for high-profile games (think Notre Dame or Georgia-Florida), but each exception will require a difficult decision by an athletic department to write the check.

Most of us would prefer to never see the color orange or yellow in Sanford Stadium, but a large and vocal block of opposing fans is a fairly unique element of college football. You know it’s a big game when you start to see the other team’s fans arriving in town. On the flip side, following the Dawgs on the road can produce some of the best experiences you’ll have as a fan. Still, the decision whether to attend a road game is often a financial one, and higher ticket prices on top of other travel expenses can make it an easy decision to stay home. If the seats end up filled by home fans, is pricing visiting fans out of the stadium a bug or a feature?

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey discussed the conference schedule on Monday, and I expect his honesty won’t sit well.

Schools and coaches still prefer the eight-game, 6-1-1 model for football conference scheduling. He does not expect a move to a nine-game schedule anytime soon. He cited the SEC having 10 teams play in postseason bowls for four straight years and four teams winning nine of the last 12 national championships as evidence the current formula works.

He’s correct, of course. The SEC has the luxury of using the schedule as a tool – a means to ends. Those ends are playoff appearances, bowl bids, and revenue. The top teams SEC aren’t penalized for their nonconference schedules, and they likely won’t be. The other teams jockeying for bowl bids (and the bonuses that come with them) don’t want seven extra losses distributed across the conference. Nick Saban wouldn’t mind an extra conference game, but he’s not particularly worried about a bowl bid or a regular season loss keeping him out of the playoff.

The schools aren’t going to be leading the charge on this. It’s against their interests to do so. Fans could vote with their dollars, but SEC attendance is strong and demand is fairly inelastic (though not completely so.) It was possible that the expansion of television coverage would prompt the conference to increase its inventory of interesting games, but that hasn’t happened either – yet. If SEC revenue lags relative to new Big Ten deals, the networks can always ask the SEC to bring more to the table.

The schools will need better incentives than the ones they have now to get on board adding another conference game. In the meantime, enjoy that trip to College Station in six years.

A big issue in the planning and construction of the magnificent IPF was site selection. The administration had to weigh several possible locations with pros and cons for each. A location out on South Milledge would have allowed for a sprawling complex with plenty of room for growth, but as we saw in 2016 it was no fun moving daily practice miles from the rest of the training facilities. Potential locations on campus eliminated logistical problems, but cramped real estate required the loss of practice fields or even campus buildings.

Georgia eventually settled on an on-campus location adjacent to the Butts-Mehre building. It cost the football program some outdoor practice space and some headaches with temporary practice fields during construction, but in the end it seems to have been a successful project that benefits the entire athletic department. We moved on to the next project, the west endzone of Sanford Stadium, to bring recruiting and locker room facilities up to par. That’s just about wrapped up, so what’s next?

Seth Emerson’s recent Mailbag (subscription required) gets us thinking again about the room available for future athletics projects. Emerson identifies several football-related projects that might go on a facilities master plan. There’s a need for a larger weight room that can accomodate the entire team. There’s no training table facility. Office space for an expanded staff is also tight. The location of the IPF worked well for its purpose, but it means that the Butts-Mehre building can’t really expand outward. Could it grow vertically? Probably not, but you’d have to ask the structural engineers.

Emerson mentions the possibility of an annex near Stegeman Coliseum, and that might be a location he brought up three years ago. When locations for the IPF were kicked around, the land containing the Hoke Smith buildings and parking lot was one of the options. That’s roughly the rectangle bordered by Lumpkin Street, the Georgia Center Hotel, Stegeman Coliseum, and the existing practice fields. The trick with using that area remains the same: you’d incur the additional costs of relocating those academic facilities and have some additional political wrangling to do since those buildings house state 4-H and CES services.

If that location does become available, it’s certainly a sizeable and centrally-located plot of land that could house an impressive training facility with a large weight room, dining, and medical training areas. Alabama is opening its own new “sports and nutrition” facility soon. At Georgia, office and conference space could be included as part of a comprehensive “football building”, or you could repurpose space in Butts-Mehre once the weight room is relocated. If you’d prefer to keep all football activites attached to the IPF, you could use the Hoke Smith land to build a new facility just for athletics administration while completely refurbishing the Butts-Mehre site for football. It’s just money, right?

While we’re thinking about football facilities, Seth reminds us that any master plan should seek input from every sport. The indoor tennis facility is already slated to be replaced. Can much more be done to Stegeman Coliseum? The Coliseum Training Facility was state-of-the-art when it opened, but that opening was 11 years ago. Foley Field received a minor upgrade within the past couple of years, but significant expansion is constrained by its location. Those are just a handful of Georgia’s sports programs, but what they have in common is competition for space within the Vince Dooley Athletic Complex on campus. The scarcity of land within that area only strengthens Emerson’s point that development within this area has to be approached strategically with a master plan. The haphazard planning that led UGA to scrap Butts-Mehre improvements five years after completion won’t cut it.

Two big administrative rule changes last month. As of October 15, a player may transfer without permission from his/her coach, and the player will be added to a national transfer database making him or her eligible to be contacted by any other coach (again without the need for approval from the current coach.) It’s not “free agency” in football – there’s still the requirement to sit out a year – but the rules are now a little more favorable for prospective transfers. One thing to watch – conferences can still make rules that are more restrictive than the national rule. Will they?

The other change allows players to see action in as many as four games while still preserving a redshirt season. We’ll be able to see true freshmen get valuable game experience, and it won’t cost them as in the past. It will also give coaches some flexibility with the roster in the event of injuries that might keep a veteran player out a couple of games but not an entire season. You’d also expect redshirt freshmen to be more prepared to play in their first full season after getting their feet wet as true freshmen.

Many of us went to the same place when this news came out: how might this rule have played out in the past? Would playing a redshirting freshman in a couple of games have mattered enough to change outcomes?

Chip Towers spent some time talking about one of the what-ifs: Knowshon Moreno in 2006. Aaron Murray in 2009 came to mind. The decision to redshirt Murray was made less complicated by injuries, but some playing time late in 2009 might have prepared him better for taking over in 2010 (a season that started 1-4.) Selfishly, how about more opportunities to see Murray throwing to A.J. Green? Their time together was cut short by Green’s 2010 suspension. In their first game together, we got this pass.

The redshirt what-if scenario that stuck with me was David Greene in 2000. This one might’ve changed Georgia football history.

The 2000 season famously fell apart, and it led to a coaching change. The South Carolina game was a debacle, but it was the only contest Georgia dropped until midseason, and Georgia remained in a position to compete for the SEC East title. The quarterback position began to unravel midseason. Quincy Carter hadn’t been impressive: there were the five interceptions at South Carolina, but even in wins over Tennessee and Vanderbilt he completed a combined 20-of-37. Carter missed the Kentucky game with an injury, and Georgia turned to Cory Phillips. Phillips was stellar at Kentucky, but he gave way to the return of Carter against Florida. That game was going well, and Georgia was poised to go up by double-digits at halftime. A Lito Sheppard interception of Carter changed the game, the score was tied at halftime, and Florida pulled away in the second half.

The Florida game was also the last Carter would play for Georgia. A thumb ligament injury suffered in the Florida loss ended Carter’s season, and Phillips would start the rest of the way. Terrence Edwards even saw some snaps in a proto-wildcat look. Unfortunately Phillips wasn’t as effective as he had been in Lexington, and Georgia dropped three of its last four games. From the Florida collapse to the horrifying Tech game, fan sentiment began to turn in a big way. It didn’t take long for an announcement to be made after the regular season.

Greene was redshirting in 2000, and there was some rumbling midseason (if not after the South Carolina game) whether it was time to play the true freshman. Donnan, to his credit, put the interests of Greene first and preserved the redshirt. It’s something I’ve seen Donnan asked about over the years, and there’s always the second-guessing about what might have gone differently had Greene played. Quarterback wasn’t the only deficiency with that team. A two-loss season without an SEC East title still wouldn’t have met the high expectations for the 2000 season, and we might still be talking about a coaching change. It’s possible though that a better finish to the season with the promise of Greene under center for the next several seasons would have been enough to stem the full-on revolt that made a coaching change a done deal.

Then again, imagine the idea of a full-blown Greene/Carter QB controversy heading into 2001 with all of the baggage of the 2000 season in tow.