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USATSI

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Brock Bowers probably would have come to Georgia anyway, but the mind of the Bulldogs' All-American tight end was made up when his native state of California shut down high school football during COVID-19 in 2020.

"I was pretty pissed," Bowers told CBS Sports. "I came to Georgia a semester early. Everything was shut down [in California]. I couldn't do anything anyway."

Getting a flash of anger out of Bowers is like getting him to drop a pass. It just doesn't happen. He is that stoic and soft-spoken.

It does open a window on one of the foundations of Georgia's success. Bowers was part of the 2021 recruiting class that coach Kirby Smart affectionately refers to as his "COVID babies."

Of the 20 high school players that signed with Georgia that year, 17 remain on the roster. That's an 85% retention rate during arguably the most challenging recruiting window in history. It's fairly amazing even for a nation champion with everything going for it these days.

"COVID, if you remember, [those kids] never went on an official visit. Never really got recruited," Smart said. "I would argue there's probably nobody in the country that has 17 out of 20 of their guys coming back in that class."

He's probably right. By 2021, the transfer portal had been in effect 2.5 years. The one-time transfer exception started in August 2021. For the most part, that class dodged the usual suspects of misfortune that chip away at recruiting classes -- homesickness, disgruntled players demanding playing time, injuries that end careers.

Eighty-five friggin' percent? There have been bloodless coups with more casualties.

"Retention is one of the No. 1 things that indicates success," Smart said.

The Georgia coach was practically crowing Tuesday at the 2023 SEC Media Days. You don't have to be told the back-to-back champions are rolling, but Smart was particularly proud that all but one of his assistant coaches returns this season.

The once-in-a-lifetime success at Georgia can be at least resume enhancers for coaches looking to bounce. The continuity, though, is such that offensive analyst Mike Bobo (former Georgia quarterback and then assistant from 2001-14) easily slid in to replace Todd Monken as offensive coordinator.

That 2021 class finished fifth nationally in the 247Sports Composite team rankings. Out of 17 remaining players, seven are starters on this year's squad -- another amazing ratio. That list includes not only Bowers but the entire starting linebacking corps and half the secondary.

All of them have championship rings, of course.

"I challenge anybody to dig up that COVID class … and you know what we evaluated that class on? Love of the game and being selfless," Smart said. "It's hard to find, but it's not hard to evaluate."

That "probably" in Bowers' decision is colored only by the "what if" of whether California had decided to play high school football during COVID-19. But Smart reminded that Bowers committed the previous summer in 2020 just as the pandemic was sweeping the nation.

Bowers' arrival in Georgia was the crest of another wave of West Coast talent coming East. Bowers is from that (hardly) football crazy burg of Napa, California, where there is more Friday Night Wine than Friday Night Lights. Point being: Think of what the Pac-12 would be like on the field today with the likes of California natives C.J. Stroud (Ohio State), Bryce Young (Alabama) and Najee Harris (Alabama) had stayed home.

"I think the initial interest [in Georgia] was the opportunity to win a bunch of games," Bowers said. "California was all shut down. I didn't play my high school season. Everything was open out here in the South and East. I guess I was, 'I want to be able to play and win games.'

"I looked at all my school options out there. They were kind of in bigger cities like Berkeley and L.A. I was kind of more interested in having more of a college town like Athens."

These Dawgs have monopolized the game at a micro level in an era when the SEC has monopolized the entire sport. SEC schools have won 13 of the last 17 national championships, including the last four in a row. Georgia's second consecutive national title marked the 13th time since 1936 that feat had been accomplished. Only eight programs have ever done it. Four did it twice (Oklahoma, Alabama, Nebraska, Texas). Georgia is the second to do it this century, the first since Alabama in 2011-12. (Smart, of course, was Nick Saban's defensive coordinator on those teams.)

The Dawgs are the first to do it in the College Football Playoff era (since 2014).

A core of COVID babies remains to tell part of the story.

"It's only that hard if you don't recruit the right people," Smart said. "I'm proud of the fact 17 of 20 guys are still in our [program]. … We've retained those guys because we've invested in them as freshmen. We've invested in them as sophomores. They've seen kind of return on investment for older players that stuck around."