Tony Grimes: Nation’s No. 1 CB was set to see UGA amid a flurry of spring visits

Want to attack every day with the latest UGA football recruiting info? That’s what the Intel brings. This entry checks in with 5-star CB Tony Grimes at this time. His plans for the month of March and April have been halted due to the COVID-19 scare affecting our country. 

Tony Grimes had plans for a big March. The nation’s No. 1 cornerback prospect (per the 247Sports Composite) had the following visits lined up prior to our daily lives changing radically across America.

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Grimes was set to start thoroughly evaluating his decision with a sensible brick-by-brick approach. He was in no hurry with any of it. There was no deadline looming.

It was just the thing to do. His announced commitment date of Dec. 1, 2020, is still months and months down the road. He still needed to be out to see what he needed to see. Grimes needed to see how some of his top options went about the business of their spring football practices.

Those were the visits which had been planned for this month. Grimes was going to be in a 7-on-7 Tournament in Atlanta on the weekend of March 15. There was a trip planned to see Georgia and Georgia Tech on that same weekend with a few of his 7-on-7 teammates.

That Sunday trip had already been set up with the Georgia coaching staff.

That was right at the outset of what would be a big period of uncertainty. Grimes learned some startling news earlier this month regarding his Hampton Roads school district in Virginia.

If he left the school district for travel outside the region, he’d have to self-quarantine for 14 days before he could return to school. That policy would have shut down those March visits prior to that point earlier this month when all of those NCAA member institutions halted the business of recruiting visits with the closed campus scenario for the foreseeable future.

RELATED: Check out the remarkable on and off-the-field read on Tony Grimes. It is about a lot more than football here. 

Check out the push-ups reps in that embedded tweet. The 6-foot-1, 179-pound Grimes repped out over 50 in that 51-second clip.

His junior highlight film will also follow below. It reflects why the standout from Princess Anne in Virginia Beach rates as the nation’s No. 7 overall prospect for the 2021 cycle.

Tony Grimes: The thoughts there about Georgia 

Team Grimes was not about offer chasing. Those visits were focused on drilling down on the schools they had already seen. The ones they viewed as solid offers and opportunities.

“I tell people all the time to stop chasing offers from programs you don’t have a scholarship with,” his father Deon Glover said. “Go visit the schools that you do have offers from. Take advantage of that time. If you have a good scholarship offer with two or three schools, go visit those two or three schools two or three times apiece.”

“We couldn’t see anything like this happening but at least [that way] you will have enough information about a school to make an informed decision.”

With Georgia, they had only seen the Bulldogs one time. That was a big trip. The scope of that time vaulted UGA from outside of his top 10 schools to the status of earning a coveted official visit.

Tony Grimes and his father, Deon Glover, made it down to the Under Armour All-American Game in January of this year. (Tony Grimes/Courtesy photo)/Dawgnation)

“Of course we want to visit Georgia more,” Glover said. “We love it. We love the coaches there. We talk to them all the time. I want to visit the program more with Tony to kind of get around the team a little bit. See the camaraderie and see how it all flows with being around them.”

That was important here. Even with that Dec. 1 deadline way down the road.

“We’ve been to enough schools to say ‘Hey if push came to shove and we need to make a decision now we can make a decision now’ and we’ve been to enough schools multiple times to be able to say that,” Glover said. “At least with the schools we like. We’ve been multiple times. With the exception of Georgia.”

There is a clear interest here in Kirby Smart’s program.

“What’s going on at Georgia is elite mimic energy that you see in Clemson and some of the other top programs,” Glover said earlier this month. “With the program itself. We learned a lot when we were down there the first time and of course, we were going to go back this time in March and go back again in April.”

“We had an official visit set up for June 12. We had put the gas in there with Georgia. Trying to get as much as we can about Georgia in a short period of time. But with those other schools, we have already got enough information on them. For real.”

Nobody knows if those dates can be met at this time. It seems more than likely that a lot of those will be pushed back.

This does back up the research portion of his timeline.

It will not matter in the long run here. A few schools, like Clemson, have said that they will wait for Grimes until he’s completed his decision process.

The Tigers will give him a reserved parking spot in their 2021 class until he’s let them know they are no longer in it. North Carolina, Penn State, South Carolina, Texas A&M and USC have said the same thing.

Would Georgia be one of those schools? Glover said the staff didn’t say that.

What the Bulldogs did say was even more impactful.

“Georgia told us that he was the most important recruit in the class for them,” Glover said. “Period. Overall. With me hearing that from the coach, that tells me that they are definitely in it until the end.”

You asked for it. We heard you. Our weekly live DawgNation “Before the Hedges” recruiting show is now up on Apple podcasts. Check it out. 

Tony Grimes had visits planned to see Georgia in March, April and June. Now? Who knows when he will see the Bulldogs again. (Tony Grimes/Courtesy photo)/Dawgnation)

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