This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting has the latest with 3-time state champ Khamari Brooks at North Oconee High School. He’s the nation’s No. 14 EDGE and No. 112 overall prospect for 2026 on the 247Sports Composite. The On3 Industry Ranking has him as the No. 17 EDGE and No. 114 overall.
Khamari Brooks was set to be picked up by the car service at noon today. It was to take him on anywhere from his 10th to 20th visit to check out Georgia football.
Twenty? Really?
“I’m not sure,” he said. “It might be. To be honest with you.”
Location helps there. The 4-star EDGE at North Oconee estimated that it takes maybe 15 minutes to go from his front door to Butts-Mehre in heavy traffic. That’s maybe the span of six stoplights.
His former high school teammate, current UGA freshman Landon Roldan, was set to host him on his official visit.
“He and I talk a lot,” Brooks said. “We’ve known each other for a very long time. Before we both started getting recruited. He and I have talked about it. He lets me know about how stuff goes, how the workouts are, and what they’re doing up there with the day-to-day. He kind of helps me through it when it comes to learning about the program when I’m not even up there.”
The decision should come down to Alabama and Georgia. He’ll visit Georgia first, then Alabama, and he’ll figure out if he needs to take any more official visits.
The feeling here is that he likely will not.
“I know I will for sure be taking Georgia and Bama,” he said of his upcoming visit schedule.
The 6-foot-4, 230-pounder was a key catalyst on the basketball court for two back-to-back North Oconee state championships. He also dominated the GHSA state football title game against Marist last December. He tallied eight tackles, 2.5 TFLs, and one sack. He also had 52 receiving yards and caught a touchdown.
He said Georgia assistant Chidera Uzo-Diribe “really turned up the heat” from that point on.
“Ever since around that time, the recruitment has stayed very consistent,” Brooks said. “I would say that they’ve made me feel like a high priority and like their No. 1 and their top guy on the board.”
When asked to preview this weekend’s official, Brooks gave several detailed answers. Even after double-digit visits to The House of Payne and the UGA footprint, there was still room for discovery.
“I never seek to stop learning,” he said. “There’s always something new that you might have seen or heard the last time you went. I’m just going into this thing with an open mind. I’m always ready to learn.”
There was the same thread in every answer: It was what a “football guy” would say. He couldn’t wait to talk to Georgia defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann, EDGE coach Chidera Uzo-Diribe, and Kirby Smart again."
Talking ball. That’s his thing.
“I’m really ready to sit down with Coach [Schumann], Coach Uzo-Diribe, and Coach Smart and just learn from those three,” he said. “Just really sit down and learn more about their defense. I would say that’s the biggest part that I haven’t learned [about Georgia] so far. The way they do things when it comes to how they do things on the defensive side of the ball.”
If he got to come away with a few pearls from their brains this weekend, that would make for a fantastic OV.
“Really sit down and see where they really see me,” he said. “I’ve been trying to find out a little bit, but I feel like we haven’t had the time to really dive deep into that. I hope they will have that time on this OV to do that deep dive and really put me into situations and see where I would be in certain situations on the field.”
He’d eat that up.
“You can just tell they have a mind for football that’s kind of better than a lot of the other coaches in the country,” Brooks said. “Those are two guys [Schumann and Uzo-Diribe] who have been working together these last few years, and I can really see the chemistry there when they talk to each other.”
When Brooks visited two weekends ago for the scavenger hunt, it was fun. Georgia goes above and beyond to make it fun and different. It’s a winning formula, but he was never going to say that was his best visit to Athens.
Brooks had another “football guy” answer.
“I love football at the end of the day,” Brooks said. “So I would say going to that Tennessee game (last fall) and seeing them win that night game at night was kind of my best visit when it comes to watching football. That was a good game, and it was one of the top matchups of the year last year, so being able to watch that game was really fun.”
Uzo-Diribe has been relentless in recruiting Brooks.
“He calls me or my Mom or my friends almost every day to check up on me,” Brooks said. “... To see how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking about the school and other things.”
North Oconee runs a similar scheme to the Dawgs. That’s a plus.
“My transition won’t be as mind-blowing as others,” Brooks said. “A lot of the words and the stuff they do on defense are very similar to the stuff we do at my school, except it is on another level.”
Why Khamari Brooks is a priority for the Dawgs
Georgia was a “dream school” offer for him. That said, Brooks, to put it simply, is just different.
The Athens native caught 31 passes for 569 yards and nine touchdowns on offense, but that wasn’t his most important role for his team last fall. The game wrecker had 131 tackles, 17 TFLs, and 13 sacks. He forced two fumbles, recovered two more, picked off a pass, and added two more scores on defense.
His step-grandfather, Charles “CJ” Junior, was a receiver on Georgia’s 1980 national championship team. That’s not even the most famous “DGD” in the family.
That honor would go to his great-uncle Horace King. King was an athletics pioneer in the SEC as one of the “First Five” black players at Georgia.
The resume got even better once Georgia legend David Pollack shared what he sees in Brooks. Pollack feels that the most intriguing thing about Brooks is not the stats, the film, or his sharp developmental curve.
It traces back to a beautiful football mind. The former Georgia great had the chance to assess it when Brooks was approximately eight years old, playing youth football.
“Let’s start with the good,” Pollack said last fall. “No, better yet, I’ll start with the great. Khamari is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever been around. Khamari is brilliant. So, how I got Khamari to North Oconee is that he was in third grade and we played against him.”
“We had wristbands for every play. Khamari figured out our wristbands by the second half and was in the third grade. Where the ball was going. What it was. I was like he was the biggest and strongest kid on the field, too. He was the best player by far.”
Brooks was playing for a local Athens YMCA team at the time.
“I was like ‘Crap’ and it blew my mind,” Pollack said. “That was incredible. So it starts with brilliance. He’s just unbelievably brilliant. He’s got elite hands. He’s got really good hands and a feel for people. He’s never in a hurry. He’s got really good feel for the game. Instincts. Unbelievable presence and calm in the storm. Never gets sped up. He plays at his pace, and so he’s definitely got some really cool gifts.”
The 4-star EDGE remembers that day. One of his best childhood friends was playing for Pollack’s team.
“You know, in Little League, there’s not that many plays that you could possibly run,” Brooks said. “So you’re able to pick up on those things and just like know where the ball was going. It was in the back of my head for a long time. I think I remember we were on defense, and they ran like a QB read one play, and I remember I called it out, and I knew where the play was going.”
Pollack was sold. He tried to get his family to move to North Oconee.
“I finally started playing on his team in like the sixth grade,” Brooks said.
Nothing has changed with that “brilliant” mind. Pollack is now coaching Brooks at North Oconee.
“You ask [North Oconee] coach [Tyler] Aurandt or you ask coach Pollack now,” Brooks said. “I will come to the sideline and tell them things I am hearing on the field out there that will really help us when it comes game time.”
Why Alabama looms as a big threat to UGA
DawgNation will remember the name Christian Robinson. Robinson grew up in the Metro area and went on to start 17 games for the Dawgs. He had 159 tackles across his last two seasons. That’s when the Dawgs made back-to-back SEC title game appearances.
Why is Brooks thinking of rolling with the Tide? The biggest reason is the way Robinson, now an Alabama assistant, has been recruiting him.
“CRob” came up over and over when he was asked about Alabama.
“CRob has stayed very consistent,” Brooks said. “Since the day I got the offer, he has recruited me since then, and it has really made me feel like a very high priority between those two schools. ... The way they play is very similar to the way I play in high school. When it comes to staying and playing on two feet, most of the time. They are playing everywhere across the offensive line. They are playing overhang backer. They are stacking it back in the middle. Reading the guards. They like to play that way, and that’s kind of what I like to do. I don’t like to limit myself to just doing one thing. I like to do everything on the field.”
“The first time I went up there, I just had that feeling like ‘Ok, this is a place where I see myself’ and just being up there, I felt like that’s an environment I want to play at. So that’s another reason why I like Bama.”
Brooks said he’s been to Bama “four or five times” during his process.
Georgia and Alabama. Those were the two schools he grew up dreaming of playing defense for one day. He rooted for both, too.
Brooks wants to be a coach when his playing days are up. That’s how much he loves the game.
It sounds like the school that paints the best picture of teaching the game and showcasing the best developmental opportunities will win this recruitment.
Does he disagree with that?
“I wouldn’t say I would disagree with that,” Brooks said. “That’s obviously a big part of it. I want to be successful, and, at the end of the day, it is going to be predicated on how I put the work in at the end of the day. But if you have a good plan for yourself, that is what is going to set you up for the future.”
Show him how he fits. Show him the plan to get on the field early. Show him what he needs to do to get there.
Brooks will give his commitment to the school that does those things the best over these next two weekends. Look for him to have his decision made sometime in July.
“It will definitely be some time in July,” he said. “It will most definitely be before the season. I don’t want to go into a season still having my mind not knowing where to go and not to, really stress about it, but trying to handle a burden on me about not knowing where to go. I definitely want to have my mind set before July and before the season starts."
Have you seen this week’s “Before the Hedges” weekly recruiting special on YouTube yet? Check it out below.
SENTELL’S INTEL
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