Something tells me Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson was the kind of guy whose"girlfriend" lived in another town when he was a teenager, and never came to visit. From today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution courtesy of Michael Carvell:
Certainly Georgia had some guys in-state they signed that we looked at. And whether they admitted it or not, so did they. We had some other guys than Stephen Hill that they approached. They weren’t going to come out and say they’re recruiting them, and them not go there. It’s just the nature of the business.”
Admittedly, Georgia dropped the ball on the recruitment of Stephen Hill. Tony Ball all but admitted as much to Hill himself. But when I look at Georgia Tech's 2009 recruiting class, I just don't see another guy who we ever really paid any serious attention to, unless it was done double secret probation style. We did recruit, and I would have liked us to have offered, Macon (Westside) linebacker Julian Burnett (who I think was obscenely underrated because of his height), but we didn't have enough scholarships. Other than that, I don't see a lot of guys who got more than, in the words of Deana Carter, "a few cards and letters and one long distance call."
"Approaching" is not exactly "offering a four year scholarship to." So, in that sense Johnson may be right. Georgia, like most Division 1 teams, "approaches" several hundred kids about playing football annually, some of whom will undoubtedly be playing to a half empty house in Bobby Dodd over the next few years. But there's not an Orson Charles on that list. Nor is there a Washaun Ealey, or a Dallas Lee. I'll take the ones we signed over the ones PJ signed every day.
Amazing. Guy wins one rivalry game in his first season by three points, and becomes the Alec Baldwin of southeastern football recruiting . . .