Five-star UGA signee to work out for MLB’s Atlanta Braves

Does Georgia and its fans have to worry about losing the highest-rated member of its 2015 recruiting class to another sport? Probably not, but stranger things have happened.

Terry Godwin was a five-star member of UGA’s class this year who also happens to be a fairly decent baseball player. So decent, in fact, that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that, along with other prospects, the running back has been invited by the Atlanta Braves to a workout at Turner Field late this month.

The workout will take place a couple of weeks before the Major League Baseball draft, and there’s a very good chance that Godwin will be drafted, whether it be by the Braves or someone else. That doesn’t mean, though, that he’ll ditch football for baseball. In fact, Godwin’s high school baseball coach, Dusty Hubbard, is of the opinion that football is in his player’s future.

From the Journal-Constitution:

4. Should UGA football fans be worried about this baseball thing with Godwin? Let’s skip to the bottom line: “I don’t think so,” Hubbard said. “I think, no matter what, he is going to be at Georgia this fall. Let’s say he was to get drafted – and I don’t want to think for him, and I don’t want to speak for him … but I don’t know what kind of money we’re talking about. I have been given no indication by scouts about that with Terry. In the past, they’ll tell me with a player that ‘We’re looking at rounds 10 to 15 and ‘X’ amount of money.’ The scouts haven’t given me any indication on that, or if for sure that they’re going to draft him. We’ll have to see how everything unfolds. But Terry is preparing for it. There is no doubt about that. He has talked to his parents. His parents are preparing for it as well. If it comes to fruition, they will have a plan for it. I think, right now, that there’s a very, very good possibility that he’ll be at Georgia on June 1 and he’ll be there all summer long for this summer, no matter what. He’ll be there for his first football season.”

It is possible, ala Russell Wilson, for a college football player to sign a baseball contract and still maintain his football eligibility. It’s also possible, or even probable, that Godwin could join the UGA baseball team, provided he can handle both the two-sport workload as well as his schoolwork.

Despite his confidence in Godwin playing for the football Bulldogs this fall, Hubbard still left the baseball door ajar.

“I do think he could play both sports,” the coach stated, before adding a handful of rhetorical questions. “Which way does he go? Does he go to Georgia and try to play minor-league baseball when he is finished with football? Does he go to Georgia and try to play baseball in the summers like Russell Wilson? Or does he play pro baseball and then go back to football?

“All those things are questions, and that’s for Terry and his family to decide.”

As alluded to earlier, the 5-11, 166-pound Godwin, along with defensive tackle Trenton Thompson, was the highest-rated member of a Bulldogs’ Class of 2015 (both at 6.1 per Rivals.com) that was ranked sixth in the nation and third in the SEC. That same recruiting service listed him as the No. 2 player at any position in the state of Georgia and the No. 10 player overall in the country.

(Photo credit: Rivals.com)