This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting has the latest with Lovejoy 3-star Olayiwola Oreofeoluwa Taiwo. He ranks as the nation’s No. 103 EDGE and the No. 1341 overall prospect for 2027 on the 247Sports Composite. He does not yet have a Rivals Industry Ranking.
Olayiwola Oreofeoluwa Taiwo.
Can’t you just picture all 15 vowels that make up such a splendid name rolling off the play-by-play announcer’s tongue one day? What would it have sounded like if Larry Munson got to call out that name after watching him wreak some havoc in Austin or Baton Rouge? Or maybe if new voice Jeff Dantzler tried that one on?
His under-the-radar junior tape below shows there’s the potential for just that one day in the red and black.
There are some shades of former Georgia pass-rush ninja Azeez Ojulari in his game. And not just for their shared Nigerian roots.
“Oreofeoluwa means God’s gift,” Taiwo said.
Taiwo, who was given the first name “Gideon” when he went to school in America, is set to take his official visit to UGA this weekend. He was born in America and taken back to Nigeria as a child. He’d alternate between living in Nigeria and the U.S. during his childhood up until the global pandemic scare in 2020.
Everyone has their own variant of his name.
“My homeboys, they call me Olayiwola,” he said. “My teammates call me Gideon. My coach calls me Gideon, and the coaches that really know me well, they call me Ola.”
The 6-foot-2, 215-pound rising senior has seen his stock rise of late.
“They are recruiting me to play outside linebacker,” Taiwo said. “Really an EDGE position. Rushing the passer. Also dropping into coverage to cover the shorter and smaller routes.”
First-year EDGE coach Larry Knight was shrewd in his eval once he started building his 2027 board.
“He thinks I’m very fast and twitchy when I am throwing my moves,” Taiwo said. “He also says I am a very raw player. What I’m thinking is, there’s a lot he can teach me. Because I don’t know it all with this new EDGE position, so obviously, there’s a lot more that I can learn. He feels that I have a lot of upside.”
The Bulldogs are firmly among his top five schools along with Kansas, Rutgers, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest. The 3-star’s ranking has yet to sync with his offer list. He’s picked up offers from Indiana, Minnesota, Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Virginia this month. Not to mention the Dawgs on May 8.
“Georgia is one of those schools, I will say that I actually looked at my freshman year of high school,” he said. “We ended up going to this 7-on-7 camp. It was at Georgia. Went to Georgia. Got to see this place and look around. My team went pretty far in the camp and as we were playing, the Georgia players were getting ready to work out and practice on their own.”
“I saw them warming up. Doing all their things and I said to myself, ‘I love Georgia. I would like to play here one day,’ so now this year I ended up getting the chance to go up and watch Georgia’s spring practice. A full practice. See how they were in the meeting rooms. See how the players interact with each other. See how the coaches coach their players. That’s what really made me fall in love with it. I was like, ‘Yeah, I definitely want to go to Georgia one day,’ so later on, they ended up offering me and I thought about it some more and now I’m taking them up on a visit. Georgia is definitely one of those schools I am looking at.”
He’s actually been playing football most of his life. The fact that he spent a lot of time in both America and Nigeria growing up allowed him to dedicate himself to it.
The 17-year-old is very young for his grade level. He won’t turn 18 until next March. His dreams are part American dream and part football dream.
“I want to go to the NFL,” he said. “I want to win the Super Bowl, be a Hall of Famer and then outside of football, I want to be a respected nurse.”
Taiwo said he’s got official visits planned to three of the schools in his top five, but he has yet to announce them. He’d like to release them on his own social media.
“I’m in the process of narrowing my schools and narrowing my options down,” he said. “I want to make sure every visit I take is to a school that I could commit to.”
The weekly DawgNation.com “Before the Hedges” program is available as an Apple podcast.
Olayiwola Oreofeoluwa Taiwo: Where UGA could have the EDGE for the EDGE right now
Familiarity. That’s one area where the Dawgs have an “in” here compared to Kansas, Rutgers, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest right now.
“Georgia is one of those schools I got to see,” he said. “Out of all my options, I haven’t been able to travel up to see them and watch them practice and do all those other things. With me being able to see Georgia and then see how they work, see how they move and see how they are and they care about each other and everything. They have a very solid school education-wise as well so that just made me feel comfortable with saying I could see myself playing here and I could definitely see myself fitting in with what Georgia has going on.”
He knows what he likes best about the Dawgs.
“So for one, they are an SEC school,” he said. “SEC ball is very different. That’s some serious football. Number two, I love how they produce in the league yearly at that. That’s one of the things I look at. Then the development piece. Going to Georgia, you’ll go to Georgia and you won’t leave Georgia the same type of player.”
He said that was a full-circle moment when Georgia offered him earlier this month. He remembers being back at UGA for that 7-on-7 camp as a freshman. What would that young man think of him now?
“He’d be real pumped up and excited,” Taiwo said. “When I got that chance to first go to Georgia for that 7-on-7, I fell in love with it.”
Knight offered him on a FaceTime call.
“He said my reaction was one of the best reactions he’d ever seen,” Taiwo said. “I was very pumped and excited.”
Taiwo was with his close friends when he got that offer. He was jumping up and dapping everybody up in the room with him. Those were some friends he’s known for a very long time.
“We weren’t speaking too much English, but yeah, I was very excited,” he said.
Education will be a priority as well. He knows that football can stop for a player at any minute. He also said he’s looking for a program that will invest in his development, he said.
“Relationships are a very big thing to me as well,” he said. “I want to make sure the players relate well to each other, and they relate to each other in a good way. Let’s say that things aren’t going well. They will say ‘Let’s get better and let’s focus on to next week and let’s get better every day’ instead of pointing fingers and talking behind one another’s back.”
