Recruiting: Georgia's big haul

Unless you’ve been holed up on a mountain, which in fact I was this weekend, you know that the Georgia football program had a recruiting home run on Friday night.

The list of players who committed:

- Offensive tackle John Theus of Jacksonville, Fla. Fleus is the nation’s fourth-ranked player overall in the class of 2012, according to Scout.com. He's listed at 6-foot-6 and 292 pounds and could start right away. His brother Nate is a freshman long snapper for Georgia.

- Running back Derrick Henry of Yulee, Fla., one of the top tailbacks in the 2013 class.

- Quarterback Brice Ramsey of Camden County High School, whom the Georgia staff pinpointed earlier this summer as its top quarterback target for the 2013 class.

- Receiver Tramel Terry of Goose Creek, S.C. He’s also with the 2013 class, and was a target of South Carolina, which hasn’t been losing many in-state battles lately.

- Running back Stanley Williams of Apalachee High School in Winder. Williams is already a top-rated player in the 2014 class.

So that’s five players, spanning three classes, two of them in the state of Florida. Georgia now has in the fold perhaps its top target for 2012, a big-time quarterback recruit for 2013, and already one of the top tailback recruits for 2014,

The position of this writer has always been to be wary of over-rating recruiting news as it happens. You need only look at the current or recent Georgia rosters and see a number of five-stars who didn’t pan out, and three-stars who are turning into all-SEC talents.

But regardless, it’s obvious that the Georgia program scored big on Friday night. Whether the players pan out or not, the Bulldogs showed – just as they did in February – that they can still recruit, despite all the recent on-field struggles.

I’ll have more thoughts on the Dawg Night run later this week. But as someone who normally tells fans to take the careful view on recruiting, I'd say the exultations of Georgia fans, at least this weekend, are very understandable and warranted.