Georgia football’s fall from grace in the post-NIL era: cleaning up a long story

If you hang around college football and make it part of your livelihood, you’ll undoubtedly hear and read every anecdote under the sun about the greatest game in the world.

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

One that caught my eye comes from the perpetrators of the “SEC is washed” crowd, specifically those who call out the program that has dominated 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 heads talk along the lines of how the Dawgs have lost their edge since “paying players became legal.”

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Ignoring the fact that all power programs have always paid players (do you really think that USC in the mid-2000s or the Buckeyes led by Urban Meyer were getting five stars to come to their school’s pro bono?), let’s analyze why this is a tired and conclusive speech on a topic that needs more consideration.

We can start some days, since the emergence of “paying players,” called NIL, will come into force on July 1, 2021.

If the NIL has had an impact on Georgia’s ability to compete at the highest level, it hasn’t happened quickly, as the Dawgs romped to back-to-back national championships in 2021 and ’22.

Even the following year in 2023, Georgia nearly took over as the No. 1 team. 1 throughout the regular season, and missed the College Football Playoff after losing to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game.

They were arguably the best team that season, going up just once on the aforementioned Crimson Tide team, and knocked off a talented Florida State team in the Orange Bowl to finish 13-1.

Jalon Walker and Malachi Starks of the Georgia Bulldogs celebrate a defensive stop during the game against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Ga., on Nov. 29, 2024.

While it’s true that the 2024 team wasn’t the Kirby Smart outfit of old, it still won 11 games, the SEC championship, and four wins against playoff opponents, including a 34-3 drubbing of ACC Champion Clemson.

Even the 2025 team was returning to form for the Athens boys, going 12-2 and winning the conference 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,” please, sign me up for that every day of the week and twice on Saturday.

But the evidence doesn’t just come from the field, either.

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Talent acquisition is the biggest indicator of how healthy a program is in any college football season, and the numbers may indicate that the Bulldogs are far from “broken.”

Starting with the 2022 recruiting cycle, which will be the one immediately following the introduction of the NIL, the Dawgs have found great success 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 got a few nickels to put together over the years.

Many will point to this year’s class as an example of Georgia not being able to recruit now that “the field has been leveled,” given its current ranking of 30, but that’s being disrespectful.

The Bulldogs only have eight players make the current cycle, and two of those eight are five-star recruits.

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When that commitment number hits the 20-plus mark, I fully expect Georgia to move back into the top five.

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart shouts to his players during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Tennessee in Knoxville, Tenn., on Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Yes, Georgia hasn’t won every game it’s played in, but that doesn’t mean it’s “washed up” and doesn’t have much to do with the NIL.

The transfer window may have little to do with it, because 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 beat them for three years without winning a national championship either, because they’ve competed every year, and in a 12-game tournament, you’re going to get wonky results in a random game or two, especially if you’re drawing a low sample size.

Aside from not doing well against Notre Dame in the 2024-25 playoffs, their only data point from the 12-team stretch is a back-to-back, last-minute loss to Ole Miss, a team they beat two months ago.

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Georgia is good. They will be fine.

Although it pains me to say that as a Florida Gator fan, I have to drive balls and hit and I didn’t feel like sitting around watching the false narrative spread like wildfire.

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Believe me, if Georgia ever falls off a cliff, I’ll be the first one to point and laugh, but today is not that day, and tomorrow doesn’t look very promising either.

Now excuse me, I’m about to give up writing this.