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Dylan Raiola flipping from Georgia to Nebraska would be a great thing for college football
A late flip by the No. 1 high school QB in the country would make Nebraska much better and Georgia slightly worse. Both would be good things.
In case you missed it, buzz erupted Monday night that the top quarterback and No. 2 overall player in the class of 2024 is considering flipping his commitment from the Bulldogs to the Cornhuskers ahead of next week’s signing day. It’s to the point where industry insiders now expect Raiola to sign with Nebraska despite his present status as a Georgia commit. Raiola will visit Nebraska this weekend.
Raiola, who committed to Georgia over Nebraska and others in May, moved from Arizona to Buford, Ga., to prepare for life as a Bulldog. An early enrollee, Raiola could have — and could still — join Georgia for Sugar Bowl prep the day after he finishes classes at Buford later this month. No such opportunity exists at Nebraska, because the Huskers aren’t playing in a bowl game.
So, things must’ve gone 180 degrees sideways along the way for Raiola to consider flipping this late in the game, but no matter the reason, this turn of events is a godsend for a Nebraska program that desperately needs some good fortune.
Raiola simply means more to Nebraska than he would to Georgia. The son of former Husker and NFL offensive lineman Dominic Raiola and the nephew of current Huskers offensive line coach Donovan Raiola, Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule sent nine of his 10 assistants to visit Raiola in the final day of the winter 2022-23 recruiting period. Raiola visited Lincoln six times over a 2-year period. In February, Huskers fans chanted his name at a sold-out basketball game. In March, Raiola was the centerpiece of a recruiting weekend where Nebraska hosted 11 of the top 200 players in the class of 2024.
If Raiola flips and signs with Nebraska next week, he’ll be the most highly-regarded player to sign with Nebraska since Tommie Frazier in 1992. And considering the state of Nebraska football, Raiola would instantly become the most important recruiting win in program history.
At Georgia, he’d be… just another blue-chip recruit.
Neither choice is the wrong one for Raiola.
In Athens, he’d be just another cog in the red-and-black killing machine. He could sign with Georgia and join an offense with blue-chip recruits blocking for him while he threw rocket-like passes to other blue-chip recruits. He’d win a bunch of games, get drafted, and then be replaced by another blue-chip recruit, and the process would continue as if he was never even there. Three Georgia quarterbacks have been drafted in the last decade, and Carson Beck will almost certainly be the fourth. Signing with Georgia would be as close to a risk-free decision a football player could make.
Nebraska, meanwhile, has had one quarterback drafted in the past 30 years. A Nebraska quarterback hasn’t finished in the top 25 in passing efficiency since at least 2009, which as far back as the CFBStats.com database goes. The Huskers’ 2023 starter, Jeff Sims, didn’t even finish in the top 100.
There’s a lot of risk in choosing Nebraska, but the reward is immensely higher. They might build a Dylan Raiola statue in Lincoln if he leads them to the Music City Bowl. Seriously.
A Raiola flip would make Nebraska a lot better and Georgia a little bit worse. Both are good things. Raiola wouldn’t make Nebraska a College Football Playoff contender by himself, but he’d be the biggest endorsement yet of Matt Rhule to Rhule’s most important constituency — other college football recruits.
The most recent precedent for a possible Raiola flip would be Quinn Ewers transferring from Ohio State to Texas, which happened two years ago this month. Perhaps Ohio State is in this year’s Playoff had Ewers stayed, but Texas definitely wouldn’t be. And it’s better for college football as a whole that Texas is in the CFP for the first time than if Ohio State reached the event for the fifth time.
Trying to find its way out of a string of seven straight losing seasons, Nebraska can’t credibly dream of reaching the CFP two years from now. But they would become a solid bet to return to the promised land of the Holiday Bowl. Getting one of college football’s most engaged fan bases and its most storied programs back in the AP Top 25 would be a good thing for the game.
And it would also be a good thing if Georgia wasn’t quite as good as it is. The 247Sports team talent composite lists the Bulldogs’ roster as the second-best in college football. Its 2024 class is ranked No. 1… and would still be No. 1 if Raiola flips. Losing him, while not ideal, would not be catastrophic in the least.
Since the beginning of the 2021 season, a string of 48 games, Georgia has lost twice: both to Alabama, who happens to be the No. 1 team in the team talent composite.
If, in 2025, Georgia’s quarterback was merely pretty good and not the best of his class and a future No. 1 draft pick, perhaps it wouldn’t take the most talented team in the game to beat the second-most talented. Maybe Georgia would lose to a South Carolina or an Ole Miss every year or three. That would also be a good thing for the game.
In the NFL, the draft would prevent a team as loaded as Georgia from nabbing the best quarterback available. College football has no such system, obviously. Market forces dictate where talent ends up, and perhaps this time the market has intervened to push a franchise quarterback to a program that desperately needs one, and away from a program that would simply like to have one to stack next to its three others.
