If you follow college football recruiting, you probably already knew that the consensus top player in the country for the class of 2013 is Grayson's Robert Nkemdiche. Nkemdiche is a 6'5, 260 pound defensive end who moonlights at running back for Coach Mickey Conn's team. Conn is a former Alabama offensive lineman, and it has long been thought that Alabama was the clear leader for his star player's services, though LSU has also made a strong push. Nkemdiche had been set to announce his decision on May 18th, which really didn't make much difference to Georgia Bulldog fans, most of whom long ago assumed that the big guy would be committing somewhere else and that Georgia would only have a chance if something serious happened to shake his faith in his top choice*.

But things may have changed, as we'll discuss after the jump.

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As Director of Minimally Creepy Recruiting Coverage at Dawg Sports it's my responsibility to keep you up to date on what the Georgia Bulldog coaches are doing to secure the chicken from which they will one day make championship chicken salad. While the Georgia coaches have been hitting the recruiting trail hard building the class of 2013, that doesn't mean they aren't also looking farther out into the future. Tangible proof of the staff's long term focus came last night with the commitment of St. Pius X defensive back Nick Glass.

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SB Nation national recruiting editor Bud Elliott took the time to interview me about the status of Georgia football recruiting, "closing the borders", and what's at stake for Georgia in 2012. Other than the fact that I erroneously stated that Georgia could be returning 9 defensive starters in 2013 (I meant losing 9 starters) I hope you'll find it informative and enjoyable. Unless you're from the greater Muscogee County area, in which case I just hope you aren't too upset about me disowning you. If you choose to bar me from Chicken Comer's barbecue I'll be monumentally disappointed, but not surprised. Until later . . . Go 'Dawgs!

The Georgia Bulldogs received a commitment this afternoon from a nationally prominent recruit who seems like an old friend by now, Goose Creek, SC junior wide receiver Tramel Terry.

Terry was actually among the flurry of pledges the Bulldogs received at last summer's Dawg Nights event. However, he later backed off that commitment and expressed continued interest in the home state Gamecocks. I imagine that Gamecock fans will now say that they doubt that Terry's commitment is really over, and I can't say I blame them. I expect that he'll be hearing from friends, family, teachers, drivethru attendants and others who want him to stay in the Palmetto State. While nothing is final in recruiting until the ink is dry, it would be pretty unusual for a player to commit and then decommit from the same school twice. Also when Terry committed last July he hadn't really spent much time in Athens. He's now had a chance to come back and bring his family along, having spent the last two weekends in the Classic City bonding with his future teammates and actively recruiting for the Bulldogs. Expect to hear about Terry being pursued for the next 11 months, but don't put too much stock in it.

Rivals and 247Sports each rank Terry among the top 150 or so prospects in the nation for 2013, and he's emerging as the consensus top player in the state of South Carolina. The versatile 6'0 180 pounder chose the Bulldogs over offers from Clemson, South Carolina, Southern Cal, Notre Dame and Texas A&M, among others.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from Terry's commitment is that he's the eighth pledge so far for the class of 2013. On March 6, 2011 Georgia had one commitment for the class of 2012, from Florida kicker Marshall Morgan. Suffice it to say that the limited scholarship numbers and looming uncertainty regarding Coach Richt and his staff are no longer hampering the recruiting effort. Welcome aboard, Tramel! Again. And . . .

Go 'Dawgs!

It's time for another edition of the TMI series, in which we here at Dawg Sports provide you with entirely too much information about the young men who will one day take the field for the University of Georgia football team. Today's subject of minimally creepy recruiting attention is Northgate (Coweta County) defensive tackle Deandre Johnson (known since the 7th grade as "Moose") who received his "dream offer" from Georgia three weeks ago and committed to Coach Mark Richt yesterday. More on Moose after the jump . . .

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After some late drama Signing Day 2012 is essentially in the books, and for the Georgia staff it went about like you would expect. We won some, we lost some, we finished with a class ranked among the top 10 nationally. Pretty standard Mark Richt-era stuff. But what's interesting about this class is that while there are stars galore, it's easy to miss out on the really important things that happened today, which we'll discuss in more detail after the jump.

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This class will not end up with the same marquee names as last year's so-called Dream Team . . . because last year's class was about injecting talent back into a program coming off a 6-7 season. This year is about filling needs.

Seth Emerson (January 26, 2012)

2011:Dream Team 2012:Ring team?

Hutson Mason (January 30, 2012)

Despite the fact that modern recruiting coverage traces its roots back to Georgia’s courtship of Herschel Walker, I have always considered covering recruiting a somewhat odd endeavor, chiefly due to the fact that any enterprise wholly dependent upon the decisionmaking of American teenage males is bound to be fraught with chaos, frustration, and unpredictability to a degree I am certain to find disconcerting. My central nervous system instinctively rebels at the notion of fretting over football in February; I am orderly enough to compartmentalize my angst, and the cubbyholes arranged throughout my brain assign football-related fretting to the period from Labor Day weekend through New Year’s Day, while reserving February for anguish over the University of Georgia’s baseball, men’s basketball, and women’s gymnastics teams.

Nevertheless, incoming freshmen are essential to the future of any group comprised of collegians, so it matters a great deal that the Georgia Bulldogs are one of nine major-conference teams to have earned an overall five-star rating, based on Rivals.com’s recruiting class rankings from 2008 to 2011. It was the latter class, of course, that brought home the "Dream Team" that validated Mark Richt’s regime, which will remain in place on Labor Day 2012, contrary to what we believed on Labor Day 2011.

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Welcome to National Signing Day! The fax lines are open, the Dawg Sports National Signing Day open comment thread is up and running, and coverage is being provided by SB Nation, Seth Emerson, and GeorgiaDogs.com. Below, you will find the list of Georgia signees, which will be updated throughout the day, as signed letters of intent are received. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the latest crop of Bulldogs:

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