Tennessee football: Five hilarious positive spins from Vols loss to Georgia St.

4. Georgia State emerging takes talent away from Georgia. 

If Tennessee football is going to compete with the Georgia Bulldogs ever again, they need some competition to emerge for top recruits in the state of Georgia. It’s loaded overall with talent, and Georgia now has enjoyed back to back No. 1 recruiting classes, one of which was the greatest in history, under Kirby Smart.

This is a brilliant strategy by Jeremy Pruitt. He loses to Georgia State, helps them turn things around in Shawn Elliott’s third year, and then the Panthers can be the team to cash in on that elite in-state talent. Georgia may always be the big dawgs, but there is a market for competition there.

At this point, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets are clearly not the team to provide that competition. So if somebody’s going to do it, the Panthers are the perfect team, right? Look at the state of Florida. The emergence of the UCF Knights is hurting the Florida Gators, Miami Hurricanes and even Florida State Seminoles. Maybe Georgia State can do the same thing to Georgia.

Imagine if GSU starts to get hot right as conference realignment begins to take shape again in the future. All of a sudden, you’ve got a situation in which the Panthers could get into a Power Five conference and really compete with the Dawgs.

Hey, the Texas Longhorns have not had fewer than four losses ever since the TCU Horned Frogs joined the Big 12 and the Texas A&M Aggies joined the SEC. This is a long-term game by Pruitt. Lose to Georgia State now so the Dawgs have in-state recruiting competition later.