Stetson Bennett shares funny story from high school recruitment
NEW YORK — The world of College Football recruiting is a funny game. Coaches cross paths all the time on the recruiting trail and fight over the same players. That was the case for Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett, but not by the big schools. Instead, it was the Ivy Leagues that came calling for the Blackshear, Ga. native and Pierce County product.
“Yeah, so in high school it was funny: Harvard came to a practice that Yale was already recruiting at, and they looked at each other across the sideline — ’cause I’m in south Georgia, Blackshear, Georgia like they don’t go down there. And they said they looked at each other like, ‘You? Is that you?’ So it’s funny you say that,” Bennett said on Saturday at the Heisman Trophy ceremony in New York, home to the Ivy League’s Columbia Lions.
Of course Bennett didn’t end up being a Yale Bulldog, Columbia Lion or part of the Harvard Crimson. Instead he decided to walk-on and chase his dream at Georgia. Bennett, who was one of four finalists in the Big Apple for the trophy presentation, has been a part of two SEC Championship-winning teams (2017 and 2022) over the course of his career in Athens while helping Georgia win the East two more times (2019 and 2021). He worked his way into a starting role in 2020 after taking over with Georgia trailing in the first half of the season-opener that year and went on to start five games that season. Bennett went 3-2 before being benched. Then, in 2021, he came back into a starting job after JT Daniels, his replacement in 2020, suffered a pair of injuries early in the year and would go on to lead the Bulldogs the rest of the way, starting 12 games on their way to the program’s first National Championship in 41 years.
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“Wow. The American Dream,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said about Bennett and his career journey during the Heisman Trophy ceremony on Saturday night. “This guy was Baker Mayfield for one game as the scout-team quarterback and he did a hell of a job being that. He won over his teammates by the way he performed on the scout team and he just kept getting better. We kept thinking he wasn’t good enough and he kept proving us wrong over and over and over again. He earned it in practice. He earned it with his teammates. He earned it with the way he performed in every big moment and he did that this year as well.”
Bennett and the Georgia Bulldogs take on Ohio State in the College Football Playoffs later this month. It’s a second straight appearance as UGA will look to become the first back-to-back National Champion since Alabama in 2011-2012.
