There is no shortage of firsts this week in Southeastern Conference football.
The 29th SEC championship game will be the first one to kick off in prime time, and it will also be the first to have company. Tennessee hosting No. 5 Texas A&M is among three undercard contests that will transpire Saturday before No. 1 Alabama and No. 11 Florida collide inside Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium, with a fourth - Vanderbilt at No. 10 Georgia - having been canceled Monday afternoon due to COVID-related issues with the Commodores.
Then there is Wednesday's start to college football's early signing period, which made its debut in December 2017 but is occurring for the first time amid the global pandemic.
"It's different this year because you haven't seen these guys," Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. "It seems like a year since we have seen a recruit. It hasn't been that long, but it just seems like forever. Most of them are not in the same spot as some of them would be if a coach was coming in their home a week before. When you are coming into their home, it creates doubt.
"This is virtual recruiting, so most of these kids have decided what they are doing. It's probably going to be anticlimactic. It's going to be more about whether they sign or don't sign, not who they are signing with."
Monday's cancellation will result in a no-contest, which will leave Georgia with a 7-2 record for this most unusual of regular seasons. Vanderbilt has finished its year at 0-9, the first winless season in Commodores history.
The NCAA instituted an immediate dead period for college football recruiting with the outbreak of the coronavirus in March, and there seemingly have been more extensions of the dead period in this 2021 recruiting cycle than commitments or decommitments.
On June 25, the dead period was extended through August. On Aug. 12, it was extended through September. On Sept. 16, it was extended through 2020, and on Nov. 18, it was extended through April 15, 2021.
"I think everybody understands the reason why, and it's very unfortunate, but we're trying to adapt," Tennessee's Jeremy Pruitt said. "It's unfortunate for the recruits, really, especially for the ones for this year. Lots of them didn't even get to take trips. Some of them may not have ever been to a college campus, and they've got to decide where they want to go to school.
"We've worked hard to try and build relationships and kind of take our campus in Knoxville to them."
Alabama's dominance on the field this season - the Crimson Tide wrapped up their 10-0 run through conference opposition with Saturday's 52-3 trampling of Arkansas in Fayetteville - is matched by a No. 1 class of commitments that contains five top-25 prospects nationally and 12 top-100 recruits in the 247Sports.com rankings. Ohio State is currently second in the 247Sports team standings, with Smart's Bulldogs third.
Georgia has seven top-100 prospects among its 20 commitments.
LSU (fourth), Florida (seventh), Texas A&M (13th) and Tennessee (15th) are next in line among SEC programs, while three league programs with first-year coaches in their first full recruiting cycle are also faring well. Ole Miss, Arkansas and Missouri currently rank 18th, 19th and 26th after having finished the 2020 cycle 34th, 30th and 51st.
SEC programs notably off from previous years include Auburn, which fired coach Gus Malzahn on Sunday, and South Carolina, which is undergoing a coaching change from Will Muschamp to Shane Beamer and ranks 93rd after placing 19th earlier this year. Auburn finished seventh earlier this year but is currently 42nd, though the Tigers do have five four-star prospects among their 12 commitments.
"It's just weird," Smart said. "I feel like we know who we're going to sign with 90% of our spots, so you don't have that concern of, 'Oh, no. He's got two more trips. We've got to survive him visiting here and here.' That's not there, but you are still concerned because they can have conversations and change their minds up until signing day.
"My big concern is just like it's been these past few years. I don't know a lot of the valuable spots that we need, because a lot of that is based on juniors and the (NFL) decisions they have."
Bulldogs bites
Senior linebacker Monty Rice is among the five finalists for the Butkus Award, joining Missouri's Nick Bolton, Tulane's Zaven Collins, Utah's Devin Lloyd and Notre Dame's Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah. Jack Podlesny's seven extra points in Saturday's 49-14 win at Missouri extended Georgia's NCAA record of consecutive PATs to 329, a stretch that began in 2014 and involves six kickers. Former quarterback D'Wan Mathis, who started the Sept. 26 opener at Arkansas, announced Monday that he was transferring to Temple.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.