I'm not sure I get the love for South Carolina or Tennessee so much over Georgia. Don't get me wrong, those states have a lot to offer and a lot of nice places to live. Especially don't get the love for South Carolina. I guess the South Carolina beaches?
Georgia has three pro sports franchises and an MLS team. Atlanta has at least as much major entertainment options as any southern city. Atlanta gets all the concerts, theater tours, etc. that any other large city might get.
Georgia has the 10th most fortune 500 companies (18) of any state, more than North Carolina (13) and almost twice Tennessee (10) and South Carolina (0) combined.
It's two public flagships are ranked #38 and #48 in US News. South Carolina has #75 & # 117, Tennessee has #103 and no second flagship. And unlike those states, a student with a 3.75 GPA can go to either of Georgia's flagships for zero tuition (as well as any other state university).
Georgia doesn't have the smoky mountains, but it does have the blue ridge mountains less than an hour north of Atlanta, and its a shorter drive to the Great Smokey Mountains from Atlanta than from Nashville. Georgia does have Savannah. I can be in either Tennessee or South Carolina in two hours...the weather isn't that different.
It's a shorter drive from Atlanta to Destin than it is from Charlotte to the Outer Banks.
You can pretty much fly anywhere without a layover from the Atlanta airport, the world's biggest.
I'm not some huge Georgia stan by any means, but I'm always kind of curious how it doesn't rate when other states in the region do, and I've spent quite a lot of time in all of them. A big part of it I suppose is that there isn't like a mental picture of what Georgia looks like from a topology perspective compared to what people thing of for rolling hills of Tennessee or North Carolina.
But this is literally in suburban Atlanta, my kids have sat here many times:
And this is maybe an hour north:
It's not the Rockies, but Georgia isn't merely flat red clay and pavement either.
The biggest knock I would think on Georgia is that it's mainly Atlanta, without multiple cities people think of as being attractive (the way you might think of Tennessee being a choice of Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga). That's fair, if you're dead set against living in a huge city or its suburban satellites, I could see Georgia being a non-starter.
I could not deal with the traffic in Atlanta. It's freaking horrible.
Savannah is wonderful. So many cool places to eat there.