What a day for Georgia! The Bulldogs added another 5-star commitment as tight end Jaxon Dollar announced his pledge to UGA.
It’s remarkable how year after year UGA tight ends coach Todd Hartley seems to get his man. Dollar — assuming his commitment sticks — will eventually join a group at Georgia that includes three tight ends signed for the class of 2026, among them the 5-star Kaiden Prothro. Not to mention Elyiss Williams and Ethan Barbour from the 2025 class and seemingly at least one elite player at that position every year since Brock Bowers first arrived in 2021.
Dollar, to his credit, doesn’t seem to be intimidated by that depth. He appears to like the challenge.
It takes a special player to want to play at a talent-rich program like UGA, where playing time will never be guaranteed. It certainly seems Dollar might indeed be that special.
On another note, thank you to everyone who made our Gator Hater Updater: Day 2,000 a special one. It’s a terrific milestone for our show. Hopefully, Georgia’s winning streak over Florida will continue on for another 2,000 days at least.
Finally, best of luck to the Diamond Dawgs as they seek their seventh series win in SEC play when they host Missouri this weekend.
Hope you all have a great weekend, and hope you’ll check out the rest of our coverage below.
Trivia time
Where does Georgia football’s recruiting class rank after Dollar’s commitment?
Answer is at the bottom of the newsletter.
Dollar commits to Georgia football
There are just times when a recruit knows. Even a 5-star recruit.
That’s what Dollar has felt about the Georgia Bulldogs. He’d had a strong interest in UGA, but also Notre Dame and Miami.
Yet when he was in Athens for G-Day, he just felt it was the move. That was his sixth recruiting trip to check out UGA.
Dollar quickly made moves to announce his college commitment after that visit to the Georgia football spring game. He scheduled his decision ceremony for Thursday evening in the Charlotte metro suburb of Denver to let the world know.
That date was tied to ensuring many of his family members and loved ones would be in town. Those were in full force at his livestreaming ceremony, hosted by 247Sports and also streamed live by DawgNation on all of its social platforms.
They were easy to spot. They were the ones wearing the custom white shirts with Dollar’s logo, which is a blend of the letter D and a traditional dollar sign.
He chose the Bulldogs at his ceremony Thursday night. That bumped the Dawgs back to eight commitments for the class of 2027 after a recent decommitment this week. Dollar is expected to be the only tight end in the class. He’s also now the third 5-star commitment (247Sports Composite ratings) in this class for the Dawgs.
5-star decision preview for the No. 2 TE in America
Dollar was walking the halls at East Lincoln High School the other day. He had on a Georgia backpack, a Notre Dame T-shirt and a Miami lanyard on.
When asked about the attire, he said he didn’t know what he was going to do yet. He was just keeping it real.
His honesty is admirable there. Not to mention his ingenuity. Those are the three finalists for Dollar’s decision Thursday. The 6-foot-4, 224-pound rising senior from the Charlotte metro area of North Carolina chose between Georgia, Notre Dame and Miami.
The timing is the intriguing part here. The 5-star prospect on the 247Sports Composite was just in Athens for G-Day on April 18. He’s now quickly moved to the commitment phase of his recruiting process in the aftermath of that visit.
Five-star tight end Jaxon Dollar attends G-Day to watch the Bulldogs annual spring scrimmage at Sanford Stadium on Saturday, April 18, 2026, in Athens.
“They are getting a great kid who really has the team first. He’s had multiple chances, I’m sure, to leave our little high school, and he hasn’t. So I think they are getting a kid who will be dedicated to that program. He’s going to be a good teammate. He’s going to be a hard worker and he’s going to make the players around him better.”
Smart gets honest about Georgia only winning the SEC championship
Coach Kirby Smart played a significant part in putting and keeping the SEC at the top of the college football pecking order.
Between his time at Alabama and Georgia, Smart was part of six national championship teams from 2009 through 2022. The last two came in his time leading Georgia.
Yet Smart is well aware that the Big Ten has won the last three national championships, with Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana all taking home the prize Georgia strives for. Add in that the Big Ten just had more first-round draft picks than the SEC — by a 10 to 7 margin — and even a staunch SEC supporter like Smart sees the Big Ten is on top at the moment.
“I don’t know that right now you’ve got a lot of merit to stand on when it comes to the championships they’ve been able to win,” Smart said when asked on “The Paul Finebaum Show” if the SEC was the best conference in college football. “Kudos to those three teams. Those are three really good teams, really good quarterbacks.”
The SEC did top the Big Ten in terms of total draft picks, with the SEC putting out 87 compared to the Big Ten’s 68. But Ohio State once again led all schools in draft picks with 11.
Indiana and Penn State each finished with eight draft selections, the same as Georgia.
While it was a down year for Georgia in terms of both draft picks and first-round draft picks, Smart still sees the talent spreading out across college football. His Georgia program is not immune to that.
