Twice Engaged, Once Married, Game-Time Decision

GEORGIA MONEYBALL — Saturday, October 3, 2026

Jared Curtis, who committed to Georgia twice and then signed with Vanderbilt, may come back to Sanford Stadium for homecoming, and Kirby Smart has already explained his view of the matter.

ALBANY, GA — · By the RFA Sports Desk

There is a particular kind of Southern homecoming where a fellow who proposed to your daughter twice, then married the girl from Nashville anyway, turns up at the reunion and asks where the punch bowl is. That is Jared Curtis this afternoon at Sanford Stadium, if he turns up at all. Curtis committed to Georgia on two separate occasions before signing with Vanderbilt. Pete Thamel reported this week that the Commodore quarterback will try to play today, and that the final call will come after a pregame evaluation.

As The Tennessean relayed it, Curtis was limited in practice all week but got through Friday's walk-through without trouble. A walk-through is not a football game. Nobody has ever been sacked in a walk-through. Nobody in a walk-through has had to look across at a Georgia defense that has scored 12 points of its own through four games, as Mike Griffith noted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A quarterback with a sore anything, facing that bunch, is a man trying to read the Sunday paper in a hailstorm.

Nobody has ever been sacked in a walk-through.

Earlier in the week Kirby Smart was asked about a young man who had committed to him twice and left anyway. His answer was the most honest thing a coach has said about recruiting since the invention of the fax machine. "No one's committed until they're signed," Smart said, according to Bulldogs on SI. "They're not yours. They have an option to go to other places. You also have an option to not keep them." It is the voice of a man who has been left at the altar before and no longer buys the ring ahead of time.

And as Smart's own words suggest, the shopping never stops. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Georgia flipped Alius Mayo, a 6-foot-4 cornerback at Modesto Junior College and the No. 1 junior college prospect for 2027 according to 247Sports and Rivals, away from Cal. He made the change after an official visit for the Oklahoma game. Mayo credited cornerbacks coach Donte Williams and said Smart told him he would get early playing time. One young man walks out the front door and another comes in the back, and the porch light never goes off in Athens.

Whether or not Curtis plays, the opening quarter is where today's afternoon will probably be settled. Georgia has outscored its opponents 63 to nothing in first quarters this season, which is less a trend than a hostile act. Kickoff is 12:45 Eastern. If the old fiancé does take the field, the student section will greet him with the full warmth of Southern hospitality, which is to say politely to his face and otherwise for the next three hours. Homecoming has always been about who came back. This one is about who nearly stayed.

The Notebook

• THE GATORS GOT LOUD: Florida ran for 302 yards and six touchdowns in a 52–28 win over No. 4 Ole Miss and jumped into the top 10. Today the Giant Water Lizards are 5.5-point favorites at the Mule Skinners, which the desk calls a coin flip.
• BAD WEEK FOR THE BLUEBLOODS: Wisconsin scored twice in the last four minutes to beat No. 13 Penn State, 24–20, its first win in State College since 2003. Iowa won 20–19 in Ann Arbor on a 91-yard drive capped by a last-second touchdown, and Michigan fell out of the Top 25.
• TODAY IN ATHENS: Anchor Boys at Red Clay Hounds, Saturday 12:45 PM Eastern. The line is UGA -25.5, and the desk calls it a lock.

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.