Company’s Coming, and They’re All Enormous

Evening Edition — filed after the afternoon news cycle.

GEORGIA MONEYBALL — Friday, September 25, 2026

Three of the best young linemen in America will watch Oklahoma's first trip to Athens from the best seats Kirby Smart could find them.

ALBANY, GA — · By the RFA Sports Desk

Company's coming to Athens on Saturday, and the guests are enormous. Sports Illustrated's Georgia site reports that three uncommitted five-star linemen from the class of 2028 will be in the stands for the Oklahoma game — Asher Ghioto, an edge rusher ranked sixth in the country, Kellan Hall, a defensive lineman ranked second, and Prince Chee, an in-state defensive lineman ranked tenth. DawgNation's Jeff Sentell went ahead and called it the biggest Georgia recruiting game of the season, which is a lot of tonnage in one section of bleachers.

The stagecraft is already handled. The athletic association is striping Sanford Stadium red and black by section for the Sooners' first-ever visit to Athens as a league member, and the product on the field sells itself: Georgia has outscored three opponents 178 to 40, leading the nation at 59.3 points a game. Kirby Smart, presented with those figures, told reporters he didn't know that he'd call it a blowout. A man who won't call 178 to 40 a blowout is a man saving his adjectives for company.

A man who won't call 178 to 40 a blowout is a man saving his adjectives for company.

What the young giants will actually get to watch is a test. Smart told reporters that Oklahoma quarterback John Mateer's athleticism pops out at you — that he breaks tackles and runs inside, outside, and off pass plays. Which means Saturday's entertainment is large men trying to corral exactly the sort of player these visitors are being recruited to become, or to flatten, depending on which sideline gets them. Recruiting is mostly showing a teenager his own future and letting him pick the uniform.

Elsewhere, the sport reminded everybody why we watch. Vanderbilt beat NC State 35 to 31 on a play nobody has seen before: the Wolfpack led 31 to 28 with seven seconds left, and quarterback CJ Bailey tried to take an intentional safety — the one play in football where the object is to lose a little on purpose. He fumbled it. Vanderbilt fell on the ball in the end zone with one second on the clock and won by touchdown. It turns out even surrendering takes practice.

And down in College Station, unranked Kentucky beat ninth-ranked Texas A&M 31 to 21, scoring 21 unanswered points in a third quarter the Wildcats won 196 yards to 20. The Aggies took the week's hardest tumble, all the way to number 23. If the five-stars in the Sanford stands want the honest sales pitch, that's it: this league will humble anybody on any Saturday, which is precisely why Georgia keeps inviting the biggest people it can find.

The Notebook

• KIFFIN GOES HOME: Lane Kiffin took LSU back to Oxford for the first time and lost to his old team, 32 to 24, with Ole Miss's Trinidad Chambliss throwing for 363 yards and running in the winner. Kiffin allowed afterward that Ole Miss deserved it.
• THE LINE IN ATHENS: The desk's slate has the Wagon Pullers at the Red Clay Hounds on Saturday at 3:30 Eastern, Georgia laying 13 and a half.
• LOCK OF THE WEEK: Notre Dame, laying 27 and a half at the Boilermaker Welders, Saturday at 2 Eastern. The desk calls it a lock, which is exactly what a man selling watches would say.

Written in the tradition of Lewis Grizzard, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1946–1994.

Hear the desk read tonights report on Radio Free Albany, WPFQ 96.7.