Georgia football's fall from grace in a post-NIL era: debunking a longstanding narrative

When you surround yourself with college football and make it part of your livelihood, you will no doubt hear and read every narrative under the sun with regard to the world's greatest sport.

Most of them don't even deserve a second look and are baseless conspiracy theories, but a few exist in that uncanny realm between fact and fiction.

One that has caught my eye comes from the perpetrators of the "SEC is washed" crowd, more specifically those who call out the program that has ruled the conference for the first half of this decade, the Georgia Bulldogs.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen fans on social media and even college football talking heads run with the narrative that the Dawgs have lost their edge since "paying players became legal."

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Ignoring the fact that every power program was always paying players (you really think USC in the mid-2000s or the Urban Meyer-led Buckeyes were getting five-stars to come to their school pro bono?), let's break down why this is a tired and hackneyed refrain to a topic that requires a bit more nuance.

We can start with some dates, as the advent of "paying players," aka NIL, came into effect on July 1, 2021.

If NIL had any impact on Georgia's ability to compete at the highest level, it certainly wasn't immediate, as the Dawgs rattled off back-to-back national championships in 2021 and '22.

Even the following year in 2023, Georgia nearly went wire-to-wire as the No. 1 team all throughout the regular season, and missed out on the College Football Playoff after a narrow loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game.

They were arguably the best team that season, slipping up only once against the aforementioned Crimson Tide squad, and eviscerated a very talented Florida State team in the Orange Bowl to finish 13-1.

While it's true the 2024 team wasn't a vintage Kirby Smart outfit, they still won 11 games, an SEC Championship, and had four wins against Playoff opponents, including a 34-3 drubbing of ACC Champion Clemson.

Even the 2025 team was a return to form for the boys from Athens, going 12-2 and winning the conference once again, only to lose a close game against Ole Miss in the quarterfinals.

So, if a 65-7 record with two national titles and three SEC championships is considered "falling off," then please, sign me up for that every day of the week and twice on Saturday.

But the proof isn't just coming from on the field, either.

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Talent acquisition is the biggest indicator of how healthy a program is in any era of college football, and the numbers would indicate the Bulldogs are far from "broke."

Starting with the 2022 recruiting cycle, which would be the one immediately after NIL was introduced, the Dawgs have racked up some serious wins on the recruiting trail.

Their class rankings, according to the 247Sports composite rankings, were third (2022), second ('23), first ('24), second ('25) and sixth ('26).

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I guess you could say they found a few nickels to rub together over those years.

Many will point to this year's class as an example of Georgia being unable to recruit now that "the playing field has been leveled," given their current rank of 30, but that's just disingenuous.

The Bulldogs only have eight players committed this current cycle, and two of those eight are composite five-stars.

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When that number of commits reaches the 20-plus mark, I fully expect Georgia to be back in the top five.

Yes, Georgia hasn't won every single game they've played in, but that doesn't mean they're "washed" and it doesn't have a ton to do with NIL.

The transfer portal might have a little to do with it, since teams can no longer stack five-stars and expect them to wait their turn on the bench, but Georgia is still one of the most talented teams in the country year in and year out.

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Trying to knock them for going three years without winning a national championship is asinine too, because they've been competitive every year, and in a 12-game tournament, you're going to get some wonky results in a random game or two, especially when drawing from such a low sample size.

Other than the lackluster performance against Notre Dame in the 2024-25 Playoff, their only other data point from the 12-team era is a back-and-forth, last-minute loss to Ole Miss, a team they had beaten just two months prior.

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Georgia is fine. They will be fine.

As much as it pains me to say that as a Florida Gator fan, I have to call balls and strikes and didn't feel like sitting back and watching a false narrative spread like wildfire.

Believe me, if Georgia does ever fall off a cliff, I will be the first one there to point and laugh, but today is not that day, and tomorrow isn't looking too promising either.

Now excuse me while I go throw up from writing this.