Should I Stay, or Should I Go?

Noticing that of the Bulldogs’ current 10 combined four- and five-star commitments from the 2018 and 2019 classes, eight were from the state of Georgia, I thought I’d conduct a simple analysis in regards to all of the four- and five-star prospects in the state during the Rivals era (beginning in 2002)—what hometown were they from, and what school did they sign with?

I discovered that from 2002 through 2017, there were 394 four- and five-star prospects from the state, hailing from 121 different Georgia towns/cities, who would sign with 40 different schools. With obviously Georgia leading the way (although, and I’m no recruiting expert, that 33.2 percent seems low to me), the top-10 schools the state’s top prospects signed with:

The 394 signees divided into the 12 different regions of Georgia according to the map at the top:

Not surprisingly, most prospects were overwhelmingly from the Atlanta area; however, perhaps somewhat unexpected was a whopping 207 or 52.5 percent of the top signees were from the area which contains 42.4 percent of the state’s population (2010 census). The 12 regions ranked according to the difference of percent of state’s population and percent’s of state’s four- and five-star prospects:

Finally, divided by region, what schools did the top prospects sign with? With Georgia—again, not surprisingly—leading for each of the 12, the top three schools for each region:

And, based on the table above, the following map can be generated depicting what schools (excluding UGA) the state’s top prospects signed with in accordance to their hometown region: