Quarterback Jared Curtis stunned the college football world by flipping his commitment from Georgia to Vanderbilt, his hometown school. He is the consensus No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2026.
Five-star quarterback Jared Curtis is so good that he could pick any school he wanted to play college football. On Tuesday, he changed his mind and picked the one closest to his Nashville, Tenn. home
Curtis, the nation's No. 1 overall recruit, had been committed to Georgia most of the year. But on the first National Signing Day of the recruiting calendar, he flipped his commitment to Vanderbilt in a shocker.
The Nashville Christian School star is the first five-star recruit in Vanderbilt football history and is its highest-rated recruit of all time. Curtis, a 6-foot-3, 225-pound dual-threat prospect, is the No. 1 quarterback nationally and No. 1 player overall from the 2026 class, according to the 247Sports Composite.
This would have never happened before. But Vanderbilt is suddenly a player in the game. They set program records by winning 10 games this season and they locked in coach Clark Lea with a long-term contract extension. Add in the fact that wealthy Vanderbilt boosters are fully funding competitive NIL dollars, and the Commodores can pull off something like this.
“Keeping my anchor down in Nashville,” said via a statement on social media. "I gotta walk my path that feels right in my heart, at the end of the day this has to be my decision. Being here in Nashville and seeing what Vandy has been doing this season has been amazing and over the past few weeks, I felt more and more that I wanna be a part of that, to be close to home, to play in front of my family and friends and to be what I love to be, an underdog.
"I am excited to be a Dore and excited to be part of building something here at home with Coach Lea.”
Vanderbilt, long the worst team in the SEC, has had a resurgence the past two year under Lea and transfer quarterback Diego Pavia, who's a Heisman Trophy candidate this season. Last year they upset then No,. 1-ranked Alabama in Nashville and won a bowl game over Georgia Tech to finish 7-6.
This year they beat three ranked teams — at the time of the game — in South Carolina, Missouri and Tennessee. (None finished ranked.) It was their first 10-win season ever, and they finished 6-2 in the SEC — a league they've been a part of since 1933 and have never once won a league title. Their six SEC wins are also the most in school history.
This is their first winning season in the SEC since 2012, when the James Franklin-led Commodores went 5-3. The also had a winning season in 1982, going 4-2. Prior to that, you had to go all the way back to 1959, when they went 3-2-2.
So from 1960 through 2025 — a span of 66 seasons — they had a winning record a total of three times,
But now times are changing in this era of college football, where NIL and the transfer portal has changed the playing field. The same thing has happened at Indiana in the Big Ten. They have been the worst program in that league, too, but now they are 12-0 and ranked No. 2 in the country. They haven't won a Big Ten title outright since 1945 and shared one in 1967, but nothing since.
They are 23-2 in the past two years. They've done it with a renewed commitment to NIL and built a great program overnight. Vanderbilt is working on doing the same thing, which is why this Curtis flip is so big.