How Tech grad Trey Braun feels about his brother committing to Georgia

“I’ll cheer for Georgia when they’re not playing Tech,” he said.

Josh, a four-star offensive tackle from Live Oak, Fla., did not have interest in Georgia at the outset of his recruitment because of his brothers’ choice of school.

“But the thing is, coach (Kirby) Smart is just a crazy recruiter,” Trey said. “He’s not just a crazy recruiter, but he’s a good coach and he has a really good staff.”

He said that Smart and offensive-line coach Sam Pittman sought to educate Joshua on the quality of a Georgia education and dismantle the preconceived notions that he might have had as the brother of Tech football players who were both high achievers in the classroom. Their efforts even won over Trey, to a degree.

“It’s easy as a Tech fan to say that Georgia has really bad academics, but then when you go to schools like South Carolina, Alabama and Auburn, you see the comparisons, you realize that Georgia actually does have a really good academic profile,” he said.

Smart’s relationship-building ethos as a recruiter was on display when Trey and Anna took Joshua to Athens for an unofficial visit last year. Upon their arrival, Smart began chatting up Anna, who is the volleyball coach at Oglethorpe.

“So she and coach Smart talked coaching while we were doing the weight-room tour, and coach Smart talked only to her,” Braun said.

Joshua, 6-foot-6 and 335 pounds, selected Georgia over schools such as Florida and South Carolina. Trey said that his brother considered Tech early on, but that it didn’t make his top five. Joshua joins a 2020 recruiting class at Georgia that also includes the Nos. 2 and 5 offensive tackles in the country (247Sports composite). Joshua is rated the No. 25 offensive tackle in the country.

“It kind of looks like a football-factory decision, but that’s not the case,” Trey said. “There’s a lot of big places – Alabama, USC, Stanford – a lot of places that he didn’t consider, even though they were looking to offer him, just because they didn’t have the same personal relationships.”

When Joshua takes the field for the Bulldogs in 2020, the Brauns will become the latest in a line of families who have had brothers on both sides of Clean Old-Fashioned Hate. There have been at least six sets of brothers who were actually on opposing sidelines for Tech-Georgia games, most recently Marcus (Tech) and Keith (UGA) Marshall in 2015.

As for whom Trey will support on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, it’s a gray area. He said he wished he had a younger brother who was also at Tech so he could have an easy reason to cheer for the Jackets.

“I’ll have to cheer for Georgia, especially if they’re 11-0 and this is the difference between playing and not playing in the playoffs,” he said. “If they’re both 8-4, maybe it’ll be a different calculus there.”

His planned choice of attire reveals the limits of family loyalty, however.

“I’ll wear black,” he said. “That’s it.”