You can have all these portal classes and five-star recruiting hauls but I want to know who is going to coach them up. That is what separates the real programs from the pretenders. I remember when Coach Dooley built this program with nothing but high school kids who wanted to be Bulldogs and a coaching staff that knew how to develop talent. We did not have some billionaire writing checks to buy a roster every winter.
Kirby Smart is the best thing to happen to this program since the 1980 national championship team and I will stand by that until the day I die. But I see him out there talking about the Big Ten having an edge and it makes me think back to the 2002 season when we finally broke through under Mark Richt and won the SEC. That team had something you cannot buy in the transfer portal. They had heart. They had loylaty. They had seniors who had been through the wars together.
This Jaxon Dollar kid sounds like a player. A five-star tight end who actually wants to be at Georgia and not chase the highest bidder. That is the kind of recruit that reminds me of the old days when we got guys like Shannon Mitchell and Randy McMichael who developed into NFL players because they bought into the program. Give me a roster full of those kinds of kids over some mercenary from the portal any day of the week.