Georgia contacted only a small number of Penn State players it had interest in possibly having as transfers, according to recruiting coordinator Rodney Garner.

The school sent a list of 18 players to Penn State. Georgia released that list to media outlets that requested it.

“We didn’t even contact probably a fifth of them,” Garner said. “If there’s anybody that you think you want that you may ever want to contact, we turned the name in.”

Just like other schools did, but their lists didn’t get out. Garner joked (I think) thatGeorgia’s compliance office “set us up,” by releasing the list.

“Where’s everybody else’s list at?” Garner said. “Did they not have to do that? …They need to call Nick and see what list they sent in.”

That would be Alabama’s Nick Saban.

Garner said that Georgia actually contacted about three or four Penn State players before deciding not to continue recruiting.

“There were a couple of guys that were some need positions that we looked at,” Garner said. “If there were some interest, it could have worked.”

Garner said transfers count against the 85 scholarship number and against the number of initial counters.

“It was going to affect what our wish would be if we could get everything the right way in January and February about what we could take,” he said.

Georgia could be able to sign in the neighborhood of 34 players in its 2013 recruiting class because early enrollees can count back. Garner said nine of 10 recruits could join the program at the midyear.

The Bulldogs have 69 players on the team now that were recruited on scholarship.

“We’ve had a lot of attrition,” Garner said. “When you sit there and look at it, it’s the way we run our program. I don’t know what other people do, but we run a pretty stringent program. We’ve had some unfortunate things pop up. …Do I wish some of the guys that we lost—and we’ve lost a whole lot of guys—but you wish you could have been able to save a few of those. It definitely would have helped your situation but a lot of those guys we made the decision to cut and move on. It wasn’t a university decision or whatever. It was just what do we want to be known as? What do we want this program to be?”

Garner said coaches are “constantly” trying to evaluate character.

“It’s just like do you have kids?,” he said. “I raised mine. I want them to do this or do that, but there are some days they disappoint the heck out of me. I’m sorry. They don’t always do what I say to do. I want them to and I whoop them. I do whoop them, but they don’t always do what I want them to do. If you’ve got 125, I can promise you they ain’t all going to do what you say to do all the time. You’ve just got to discipline them, you hope try to teach them a lesson and you hope don’t try to make the same mistake and try to help make them better.”

–Please follow me at Twitter.com/marcweiszer