The impact of Covid-19 on playing college football has been unlike anything the sport has ever seen.

It’s been the same as far as recruiting is concerned.

With no official visits allowed, recruiting has been relegated to Zoom and telephone calls, forcing coaches to connect to players in ways that were never necessary in the past.

Coaches are unable to travel and see players at their respective homes and schools. This has also placed coaches like Georgia’s Kirby Smart in the position of actually meeting some early enrollees for the first time upon their campus arrivals.

That was the case with many of the Bulldogs’ 16 current early enrollees.

"I met them all by Zoom, obviously, but I met a lot of them in person for the first time,” Smart said. “We were not able to get to see these guys. looking down the list, they weren't able to come to games this year, so we weren't able to sit down and visit with several of them.”

While Georgia was able to fill most of its recruiting needs, getting to know youngsters primarily through the frame of a telephone or computer screen has meant coaches have had to be on point with their respective pitches.

“It’s just different, because on the official visit, you feel like you get to know their families and so many things about them,” Smart said. “We didn't get to do that as far as time on the phone and time on Zoom. I think those same selling pieces convinced them.”

Of course, it didn't hurt the Bulldogs that 13 of this year’s 20 signees are natives of the Peach State.

“We got a lot more kids from our own in-state. I know Georgia means a lot to them. They watched Georgia growing up, and Georgia being successful is important to them,” Smart said. “I think that was probably the No. 1 factor, because they could not factor it off visits. They couldn't do it off games. They had to do it off what they knew and understood."

The fact that Georgia is also considered a national brand also made the job easier.

Other reasons?

“One, a wonderful education. We have a really stellar class in terms of academics, so this class bought into the fact that they're going to one of the top 20 public institutions in the country. That was a key ingredient,” Smart said. “The fact that we have an opportunity to be successful. They see the support; they see what our program has been able to do from a facilities standpoint. They want to be a part of that and align themselves with that.”

Still, it’s certainly a different recruiting world than it used to be.

With the early signing period now part of the landscape, it’s also forced schools to adjust in other ways.

“In terms of the timing of things, it's tough for us, because you are making decisions blindly,” Smart said. “You don’t know who's coming back, who’s not, and those decisions aren’t made. I think those decisions are made in the right timeline. But unfortunately, our early signing prevents us from getting that information, so there are two different dates that aren't aligned.”

Unfortunately, Smart doesn't see any easy solutions.

“It is really hard to fix that. You can say the way to fix that is to push back signing day until after the junior declare day, but then you're right back to where we were before,” he said. “A lot of kids want to be able to early-sign and take the pressure off January and February, so you're not going to be cohesive in either one.”