ATHENS — There are 23 Georgians on the Clemson Tigers’ roster, and two other players completed high school in the state. Beyond that, 34 of the Tigers’ 85 scholarship players held scholarship offers from the Bulldogs in recruiting.
Phil Mafah is among that number. A 6-foot-1, 230-pound running back from Loganville, he attended Grayson High School.
Getting to open the season against the No. 1-ranked Bulldogs in his hometown is “a dream I’ve had since I was a little kid,” Mafah said Tuesday.
“For me, it’s perfect,” said Mafah, a senior who will get the start for No. 14 Clemson in the Aflac Kickoff game Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium (noon, ABC). “To be able to play Game 1 in Atlanta, to play a great team like Georgia, who has had so much success, to see our capabilities and where our hard work will take us. You know, it’s like a playoff game.”
Mafah has something in common with a lot of the Peach State representation that now call Clemson, South Carolina, home. That is, mostly they’re very good football players.
Mafah certainly is. After splitting time with former Clemson tailback Will Shipley, Mafah steps into the role of primary ball carrier this season. Not that he hasn’t played a primary role before.
Mafah enters Saturday’s game having played in 36 games with the Tigers. He’s averaged 5.1 yards on 345 carries for 1,772 yards and 20 touchdowns. He’s also caught 37 passes for another 206 yards. As a junior last season, Mafah had 186 yards on 36 carries against Notre Dame. In the win over Kentucky in the Gator Bowl, he scored four touchdowns, three in the fourth-quarter comeback.
In a word, Mafah’s a load.
“Physicality,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said of Mafah. “He’s got a downhill way about him. He was that way in high school. The more carries he gets, the harder he is to tackle.”
The Bulldogs saw Mafah play a lot at Grayson High, where he became a 4-star prospect. But while they tendered an offer, it wasn’t a tug of war between them and the Tigers.
“I was always waiting on Clemson,” Mafah said. “It was just the place I always wanted to be. I was the first commitment in my class, and I take a lot of pride in that.”
Mafah is one in a long line of Grayson High graduates who have ended up at Clemson. Mickey Conn, now the Tigers’ co-defensive coordinator, was the Rams’ coach for 16 years.
But there’s much more overlap than that between Clemson and Georgia. Winners of four of the past eight national championships, the often go head-to-head for many of the top prospects in the South.
Not all of them are from the schools’ respective states. Sophomore defensive tackle Peter Woods of Alabaster, Alabama, had the Bulldogs among his finalists. He chose Clemson, started as a freshman last season and will again against Georgia on Saturday.
“I lived close to the state of Georgia, and they did a really good job of recruiting me,” Woods said. “But, really, no knock on Georgia or anything for not getting me. Clemson just overwhelms you with so much stuff. There are so many things here that you just can’t say no to.”
It’s mostly in Georgia, though, that the two programs wage their recruiting wars. Metro Atlanta and northeast Georgia are particularly fertile battlegrounds.
“They recruit our state hard; we recruit their state hard,” Smart said. “I have a lot of respect for their players, their teams, their coaches, for what Dabo’s built there.”
There’s less overlap the last few years. Since winning back-to-back national championships in 2021 and ‘22, the Bulldogs have taken more of a national approach to recruiting. But they’ve still had some pretty intense battles over the most elite local prospects in recent years.
Georgia won the battle for Jefferson 5-star safety Malaki Starks in 2022. However, the Bulldogs’ lost a similar battle for outside linebacker Sammy Brown, a 5-star prospect from the same school in this year’s class.
The Tigers also landed sophomore safety Khalil Barnes from North Oconee High and senior middle linebacker Barrett Carter of North Gwinnett HS. Both of them will start Saturday for a Clemson defense that is considered the strength of the team.
No hard feelings, Smart said. He raved this week about Carter, who the Bulldogs wanted badly.
“He handled it the right way and made the choice that he thought was best for him,” Smart said. “He’s become a really good player, a dominant player. You can see on tape his instincts and his athleticism. He’s a playmaker and they’ve got a good one in Barrett.”
Georgia’s landed some “good ones” as well. In fact, the Bulldogs have been comparatively dominant when it comes recruiting over the past four recruiting cycles that have shaped these two rosters. Georgia’s 2024 class was ranked No. 1 in the nation in the 247Sports composite, and the Bulldogs have averaged a 2.5 ranking over the past four years. Clemson has averaged 9.2, with a high mark of No. 5 in 2021. The 2025 classes currently are ranked Nos. 4 and 14, respectively.
None of that will matter once these teams kickoff at noon Saturday. Motivating factors such as school rivalries, playing on a big stage and who recruited whom will have “about five minutes worth of value,” according to Smart.
But it sure is exciting to contemplate ahead of time.
“It’s an amazing opportunity; that’s how I see it,” said Mafah, who didn’t get to play the last time these teams met, in 2021 in Charlotte, North Carolina. “To go back to Georgia and play the preseason No. 1 team, it’s something I’ve always dreamed of.”
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