Kirby Smart's "Magic Potion"
ATHENS - Dolly Parton made the song Here You Come Again famous in the late 1970s.
Kirby Smart is making that song stick in my head when it comes to acquiring five-star quarterbacks. The news broke Thursday, as we should have all expected, that former 5-star USC QB JT Daniels is transferring to UGA.
Here you come again, Kirby.
Yet another five-star signal caller on the way… just in time for Daniels to fully recover from an ACL injury suffered in game one of 2019 to be ready to possibly get some snaps this fall Between the Hedges. And if not this fall then certainly by the 2021 opener with Clemson.
All of us should have seen this coming. This is the new normal. Earlier Thursday, Kirby held a conference call with reporters. It was sort of a status update on voluntary workouts that will start in June. He managed to take a question on recruiting.
“There’s no magic potion,” Kirby said when talking about recruiting. “There’s nobody doing something magically that everybody else isn’t doing.”
Here You Come Again. Meanwhile, the ink was drying on Daniels' transfer into UGA (is ink used any more?)
There is something you are doing that no one else is doing - getting all the best quarterbacks. Under Kirby Smart, UGA has signed or acquired through transfer three consensus five-star QBs. No other program has gotten more than that, and only one of them, Clemson, has gotten as many. (By the way, we know Clemson’s Trevor Lawerence is pretty good, but he’s the only five-star Tiger QB to have played; we know that Jacob Eason, Justin Fields and Daniels are all at minimum starters at high-level programs, so the case could certainly be made that Kirby is hitting at a higher clip with his guys. But Dabo is on Tik Tok, so...)
To think of it another way, Clemson and UGA have combined to get their paws on half of the five-star quarterbacks that have existed since the class 2016, which is the year Kirby started at UGA.
Half.
UGA is set to sign another one this winter: Bulldog commit and Prince Avenue QB Brock Vandagriff.
Here You Come Again (Kirby, like Dolly’s hair... and other parts... don’t quit)
The other thing that is critically important here, is that the new world of college football means transfers are set to happen at any given moment. Kirby is starting to perfect the art of the transfer as well. The former UGA letterman understands that quarterbacks, in particular, are not going to stay in one place and wait their turn. He’s seen that first hand. Frankly, it doesn’t seem to bother him.
Kirby may have gotten his hands on three five-star QBs, but unsurprisingly, two transferred from UGA. Clemson, Ole Miss and USC have also all seen former five-star prospects leave as well. If you are keeping score at home, that means nearly half of the five-star signal callers have transferred from the original school they signed with.
If you are further keeping score at home, three of the four signal callers in the College Football Playoff last year were transfers. Try to keep up as college football changes before your very eyes.
This is a new time - a new normal. You no longer transfer and sit out a year. There used to be an art to the transfer, but that’s done now. Players just leave. There is no right or wrong any more - they just leave. And programs have to be a ready for that.
I know for damn sure Kirby is.