Why a coach's second recruiting class may be his most important one of all

1:50 | College FootballKirby Smart would rather not relive those first frantic weeks of recruiting after he became a head coach for the first time. “It was a mad scramble,” Georgia’s second-year coach said of his pursuit of the class of 2016. “You’re finding out about kids at the last second. You’re flipping. You don’t really have the relationship that maybe a team that’s been on them the whole time does.”

After the scramble ends, the real work begins. A coach’s second class—the first one in which a new staff has a full cycle to recruit—is a much better indicator of the program’s long-term prospects.

If the recruiting rankings are accurate, Smart’s second class could be a cornerstone for…