Georgia Recruiting: Exclusive Interview with 5-star, Smael Mondon
Smael Mondon is a different cat, in all the right ways. He's the hardest worker in the room, but unless he's talking about football schematics, fashion, music, or hanging out with friends, you aren't getting much out of him in terms of talking.
We at Dawgs Daily had a chance to interview the nation's No. 1 linebacker to talk about what's going to be the determining factor behind his looming commitment decision, how he intends to use his growing platform to make an impact on social justice issues, and more.
He's listed as an outside linebacker on most recruiting sites, but Mondon has the ability to play both inside and outside linebacker, and depending on which school he lands at, that will determine which one he does end up playing.
For example, if he were to end up at Georgia he will likely cross-train at both inside and outside linebacker, Whereas if he were to land at Auburn, he may play more of an outside backer roll.
Another factor that goes into my statement that Smael Mondon is just different in all the right ways, he never attended camps. He simply went to work with his high school coaches and teammates, ran track, and played ball. And there was a reason for that:
"I mean, it's not really like a philosophy. It's just like, I never really felt like going to camps like that because like, it's not really fun to me, and you're going to get the same work at a camp as you can working out. So like, there never was a point."
Mondon already has a relatively large platform, seeing as he's a five-star prospect with just over 4600 followers on Twitter despite never really being someone that's heavily involved in social media. After all, he only has 207 tweets since joining Twitter in October of 2017.
As for how he intends to use that platform? He wants to make an impact on social justice issues like the ones we are currently dealing with as a nation:
"I mean, it's real important because like, as like an athlete in America, like, it's a lot of people looking at you. And it's a lot of people listening to you. So like, it's, it's good to use your voice to like, whatever, for whatever your cause is, is good to use your voice and let your voice be heard because a lot of people have voices that aren't gonna be heard. So like you're doing their part."
Smael is set tomake his commitment announcement at some point in June. Some will remember he sent a tweet out on May 18th with the ending "6/ /20" with the blank left intentionally. Some thought ran with the idea that he would be making an announcement on June 20th, but Smael says it was left blank on purpose, indicating that it would simply be at some point in June.
The biggest determining factor for where he will end up choosing will come down to which school will provide the best avenue to his end goal, which is to not only become a professional football player but a fashion mogul as well:
"Probably a lot of the stuff that I want to do like Outside of football, so like a lot of that stuff has a role and the decision that I'm gonna make for school I'm going to. Like clothes like fashion, I'm into like designing stuff. I'm trying to have my own clothing line"
We will be waiting for Mondon's decision at some point in June and in the meantime, schools like Georgia, Auburn, and Tennessee will continue to heavily pursue this extremely talented and hardworking young man.
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