Georgia spending on recruiting tops in the country in 2019, jumps $1 million from previous year

Georgia’s presence near the top of the recruiting rankings has been no accident. Certainly head coach Kirby Smart’s prowess on the trail has something to do with it but so too does the school’s wallet.

Recent figures obtained from the 2018-19 fiscal year by the Athens Banner Herald show that the Bulldogs spent more than anybody in the country on football recruiting last year. That number -- some $3.7 million -- was more than a $1 million more than last year too.

Some of the figures from the paper are quite eye-opening for anybody not familiar with the operation in Athens:

Clemson reported spending $2.2 million on football recruiting and Oklahoma $1.28 million for the 2019 fiscal year. Georgia’s football recruiting spending in fiscal year 2019 is more than five times what it was in fiscal year 2014. Georgia spent nearly two and a half times more money in fiscal year 2019 recruiting football players than it spent recruiting athletes for its other 20 teams combined. Football support staff spending was $5.6 million, up from $4.9 million.

No wonder that UGA boosters have ponied up nearly $140 million.

Overall the school still reported a healthy profit. They took in over $174 million from July 2018-June 2019 and spent just over $143 million of it. That profit margin of over $30 million is reported to be the second-highest in the SEC.

Even with numerous eight- and nine-figures being thrown around, the Bulldogs actually came in lower than the previous season in some places. There’s an easy explanation for that though. The team made the national title game in Atlanta but missed out on the Playoff the following year.

Still, it seems that both on and off the field, the Georgia football machine rolled on.