Let all the Bulldog faithful rally behind the men who now wear the red and black with two words, two simple words which express the sentiments of the entire Bulldog Nation: Auburn Sucks.
Impeccable timing, Kirby. I never knew he was a reader of the blog. No sooner had I posted something yesterday about a lackluster recruiting class, then Kirby has a banner day:
BREAKING: Elite 2027 LB Joakim Gouda has Committed to Georgia, he tells me for @Rivals
The No. 2 LB in the 2027 Rivals300 chose the Bulldogs over Florida, Texas, and Auburn
Kirby brought in four recruits in two days, and word is, that train isn’t slowing down, either.
Kirby also added Lovejoy EDGE Olayiwola Taiwo, another three-star, but Georgia suddenly jumped up from 22nd to 11th in the On3/Rivals team rankings for 2027, and now has an over 90 point average for the quality of the class.
Folks are starting to get a little antsy about Kirby’s 2027 recruiting class.
Man I love you Rusty. You’re the best. But we’re now Three Star U. We’re Vanderbilt. We have one Blue Chip last I looked. Our coaching staff will be asked to develop the hell out of this group. What’s going on?
Aside from landing the nation’s number 1 running back in Kemon Spell and a possible (let’s not hold our breath, here) non-verbal from a blue chip QB, folks are getting overly antsy about the recent recruiting pickups in Kirby’s class…all three stars.
Quick reminder about those stars when it comes to CJ Allen, Quay Walker, and Jordan Davis, all of which were three stars and even now it’s reminder that it’s June 1st, and there’s lots of camps and evaluations that will come to pass that will likely push these guys up to four stars or higher once they start to make a splash. Not to mention that the almighty dollar can always bring that star count up, too.
Georgia currently has the 22nd ranked recruiting class according to the On3/Rivals recruiting rankings, and it should be noted that early commitments to Georgia that are four or five stars have been shown to do so only to receive richer offers to other schools (looking judgingly at you, Miami), so there will be further moving and shaking.
Oddly, Indiana has the #30 ranked recruiting class. Why isn’t anyone panicking over that? It’s as though Kirby never heard of the portal and NIL and doesn’t know how to use it? Hmm.
Of course, there are people out there that feel that Atlanta’s loss to Cincinnati yesterday means the season’s over, even if we’re 20 games above 500 right now.
Sports, and sports fans, are interesting things to behold.
If you are going to another site for your Dawgs’ content today, make it the guys at Dawg Sports. This defense of the Georgia-Clemson home and home is a magnum opus (Someone needs to send this to Josh Brooks – athdir@uga.edu). The good Senator would be smiling over this if he were with us today.
I’ll say it now. I refuse to purchase tickets to either of these games if they move to a neutral site (yes, I attended both games in 2021 and 2024). I may even decide to hell with it and not even watch the games on television on principle. I get that schools have to look for every revenue stream they can at this point, but the powers that be look at us as nothing but wallets at this point in the name of looking out for what’s best for UGA athletics as opposed to what’s popular to fans.
I carried the ticket stub from 1984 in my wallet for years after that. I wish I had kept it pristine and gotten a signed picture of Kevin Butler kicking the most famous field goal in Georgia history.
If we don’t reject this kind of thinking while still getting OOC games with the likes of Tenn State and WKU in our season ticket packages, we’ll get more of this.
It’s time for these people to feel the economic impact of the decisions they make rather than to tell us they know what’s best for us.
The north side will be a broiler. The south side will be a hot Blackstone griddle. I’m guessing the aftermarket prices on these tickets will be “Are you giving those away including your parking pass?”
The defending SEC champions open on streaming only. Wow, just wow.
Here it is, and we have start times for the first three games now (note: both cupcakes are at home to start the season):
So for today’s Thought Provoker…which game or games are you most looking forward to…and, what’s your prediction on our record after going through this schedule?
My thought: we have a ceiling of 11-1 and a floor of 10-2. My inner Munson tells me we have to step up and prove we can win at Alabama and Ole Miss before I believe we could go undefeated, so I figure we could slip up with one, if not both, of those games.
Oklahoma at Sanford would be remarkable to go to…I’m hoping it’s a night game. Also, something surreal would be playing at South Carolina in something other than a Mars-level heat typhoon would be something to behold. I’ve never experienced that.
Call me crazy, but I think putting out there a canned excuse as to why you might get your ass whipped by the Bulldogs the following week with “we were tired” is about as rich as Lane Kiffin trying to tell Cajuns that he needs a few years to be successful after being given a dump truck of money. This feels like off-season excuse making at its finest.
He could always call an attorney, get a local judge to offer an injunction…but, wait, this isn’t the paper tiger NCAA we’re talking about…this is Mickey! You can’t beat Mickey! That option is likely off the table.
A better suggestion would be to get a hotel, stay the night Saturday and maybe fly back and do some late conditioning and film study when you return to Fayetteville. Why they feel the need to play a whole ass game, then change, press conferences, and hop a plane back is absurd to me.
Although, ESPN is behind it, and having an SEC vs. Big XII kickoff that’s not a Fox program but plays at the Fox late slot is odd. It’s almost like bringing back the PAC at Dark, but didn’t they get rid of the PAC?
Oh, that’s right. The PAC is back…on USA Network. Good for them!
Sankey says you can’t use the next to last game as a tune up, anymore, and we’ll need to have our ninth SEC game the weekend before our annual tilt with the North Avenue Trade School.
SEC athletic directors vote to play conference games on next to last week of regular season, starting in 2027. "That's the end of cupcake weekend," SEC commish Greg Sankey said
Great article here from Dawgs Central that captures all he said, but let me unpack it into the topics I know we’re all eager to heard about.
On Neutral Site Games
“I love the games, so it’s not a matter of whether it’s home and home or neutral site. You know, you ask the fan base, you could get an interesting dynamic. Everybody wants to go to another campus, everybody wants to have an extra home game for a non-conference, great game. But everybody likes neutral site games too, so there’s opportunities to go to a different place. Jacksonville, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, just to say the least. They’re really cool experiences for our fan base to go to a place they don’t usually go to.
“I’m more interested in the matchup than I am where it is. I don’t really care if it’s neutral site or home-and-home. I just hate it. I feel like we’re all gravitating away from these because of appearance to the committee. I’ve got to win, I can’t have a loss, I can’t play the schedule I want to play. I’ve got nine games and a conference, so now we’re moving away. That concerns me more than where that game is. I could care less if it’s home and home or neutral site.”
On the SEC Championship Game
“I love the SEC championship game. I’ve been a big fan of that. I grew up watching it. I’ve talked about it many times, almost ad nauseum about it. The first time they ever played in Birmingham, I was in the high school playoffs playing a Final Four football game and watching Florida and Alabama play. At the time, that was like a childhood dream. Long time since then, and a lot of changes since then.
“Is it the revenue stream that we’re having to fund our athletic programs with that we need because of it? Is it the calendar that we need to shrink so we’re not playing a championship game on late January? I don’t think that’s great for student-athletes. I don’t think it’s great for the transfer portal to be ending the season that late.
“If that championship game is in the way of that or gets put on the back burner because of that, I think you’d have to accept it. I’m really more worried about the financial burden that we’re under right now of paying for all of the athletic department. When you take that revenue stream out, can we make it work? Is it sustainable to do without it would be my biggest concern.”
On the Possibility of the SEC Breaking Away from CFB
“Well, the second part of the question I don’t have the answer to, but I’ve said this for a long time to our president. I’ve been a huge advocate that if we can’t find the rules that everybody plays by, then we should play our own. I’m not afraid of that. I’m not afraid to break away and say that our conference is strong enough to go out now and play. I mean, if we could actually function, and it financially would make our programs more stable and we could support things financially — I’m talking about all the sports — and do by our own rules, I’d be all for that. I mean, I’ve been to this meeting now 10, 11 times, and it’s frustrating at times to say, ‘Well, we can’t do this because of litigation, We can’t do this because of litigation, we can’t do this because we’ll get sued, we can’t do that.’ And we’re just trying to do things for the betterment of the sport and the betterment of the student-athletes, and that’s not curtailing what money they make. I’m not advocating that they make less money. I’m fine with what student-athletes make. I’m trying to make it where it’s as equal and it’s comparable footing for everybody and it’s not a race to the bottom, as they say.”
On Whether 24 Teams Weakens the CFP:
“Absolutely it can. But I want to go back to self-preservation. If you ask enough people, they want an opportunity to be in the party, and if they don’t make the party, they get fired. So then they’re worried about the party, not the dilution of the market.
“So there’s competing interests here that I think are unfortunate. I don’t want it to be a diluted market. I think there’s going to be more blowouts. If that happens, it’s going to happen, but that happened in the old model. I mean, let’s be honest. It happened with 12 before. So you’re not going to get perfect games, perfect scenarios, but there will be games that lose some of their meaning leading up to that. But maybe there’s more great games in the 24-team model than there are in the 12 or the 16. I don’t know.
“I’m not here to decide how many teams should be in it. I would much rather talk about how the teams are decided that are in it.”
Also, there was this interesting tidbit caught as a soundbyte yesterday:
Georgia's Kirby Smart asked about having a $40M roster this year.
"We had 40M roster last year!" he says.
— Amanda Christovich (@achristovichh) May 26, 2026
Hoo boy, let the criticism start with that one. Or, maybe instead, just get infuriated at what could be the expanded expanded playoff bracket:
I’d say that’s a joke, but here we are today, just two years into the expansion, and we’re already expanding more. First 4, then 12, now 16 or 24, next…48? 96?
— Message Board Geniuses (@BoardGeniuses) May 26, 2026
Lord Jesus, help this person find the strength to deal with this, as it seems there’s no relenting in the foreseeable future, unless Auburn gets really, really good in a really, really short period of time.
Personally, I don’t ever instigate with a “Go Dawgs”. I’ll only say this to another Georgia fan in solidarity, but I won’t say anything to anyone otherwise. Usually, it’s Alabama fans who’ve been the most vocal, with all the “Roll Tides” and all, but I don’t hear much from Auburn fans, who’ve largely gone dormant over the past decade, it seems.
Just another reminder that Auburn sucks, and will continue to do so for eternity.
