Kirby Smart is one of the most respected voices in all of college football. He’s a two-time champion and the longest-tenured coach in the conference.
He’s seen a lot in his 10 years in Athens. And as the Georgia coach looked into the future at SEC spring meetings on Tuesday, he sees a lot of issues that trouble him.
In speaking to reporters and an appearance on the Paul Finebaum show, Smart spoke on a number of issues, from the sustainability of college sports to his big concern when it comes to the College Football Playoff committee.
Below is a full transcript of everything the Georgia coach said at SEC spring meetings.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart issues warnings at SEC spring meetings
Opening statement...
“I’d like to start off with Laura Rutledge, I found out this morning, she’s going to be moving on, away from her SEC duties. I have a lot of respect for her, I feel like she and I have been in the SEC the same amount of time. With the tenure I’ve had and the tenure she’s had, she’s a good friend, and a lot of respect for the work she’s done. So, appreciate her service and wish her nothing but the best moving on.”
On big neutral site games compared to home and homes...
“I love the games, so it’s not a matter of whether it’s home and home or neutral site. You know, you ask the fan base, you could get an interesting dynamic. Everybody wants to go to another campus, everybody wants to have an extra home game for a non-conference, great game. But everybody likes neutral site games too, so there’s opportunities to go to a different place. Jacksonville, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, just to say the least. They’re really cool experiences for our fan base to go to a place they don’t usually go to. I’m more interested in the matchup than I am where it is. I don’t really care if it’s neutral site or home and home, I just hate it. I feel like we’re all gravitating away from these because of appearance to the committee. I’ve got to win, I can’t have a loss, I can’t play the schedule I want to play. I’ve got nine games and a conference, so now we’re moving away. That concerns me more than where that game is. I could care less if it’s home and home or neutral site.
On where things should start at SEC spring meetings...
“There’s too many issues to say where it should start. My biggest concern is the health of the game and the health of the student-athletes and what’s best for them. There’s so many things that you want to talk about and so many things we want to share and say this is our stance as a league. Because within the league, there’s not perfect uniformity. Everybody’s not in agreement of what’s best for their program. I think as long as we acknowledge differences and can give an opinion as a league and say this is our stance, that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. We don’t come in here and say, what’s the decision? We don’t make the decision. We merely just have a point of view. We try to share that with rules makers for what we think is best. It’s natural with all human nature, it’s self-preservation. People make decisions based on what gives them the best opportunity to have success. Sometimes that’s unfortunate. I’ve been in this conference a long time and listened to Coach (Nick) Saban come out of these meetings a long time. It can’t always be what’s best for self-preservation. It has to be what’s best for the game. Sometimes we get caught up in the middle of that.
On the SEC championship game...
“I love the SEC championship game. I’ve been a big fan of that. I grew up watching it. I’ve talked about it many times, almost adnaushem about it. The first time they ever played in Birmingham, I was in high school playoff playing a Final Four football game and watching Florida and Alabama play. At the time, that was like a childhood dream. Long time since then, and a lot of changes since then. Is it the revenue stream that we’re having to fund our athletic programs with that we need because of it? Is it the calendar that we need to shrink so we’re not playing a championship game on late January? I don’t think that’s great for student-athletes. I don’t think it’s great for the transfer portal to be ending the season that late. If that championship game is in the way of that or gets put on the back burner because of that, I think you’d have to accept it. I’m really more worried about the financial burden that we’re under right now of paying for all of the athletic department. When you take that revenue stream out, can we make it work? Is it sustainable to do without it would be my biggest concern.”On if there is any rule that had been changed that he wishes had not...
“I can’t say that definitively. The only thing that jumps out to me is I’ve always been, even when I worked for Nick (Saban) for 10 years, 11 years, that we wanted to go to a nine-game conference schedule. The appetite was much better for our fan base, for television networks, for the conference, to go to nine games. That was before we had as many teams in the conference, as we do now. I felt like a nine-game would help and be beneficial. That was with a four-game playoff. I think it might have been with a two-game playoff, some of the way, because it was just an old system. Now, you could say there may be regret in there, going to nine, because I don’t know. I’m not blaming the committee. I’m blaming the system. I don’t know that they can recognize and acknowledge truly, say, strength of schedule matters, and you’re putting a team with one more loss in their column over a team that might have one less, and they play the same schedule. I don’t know that they’re ever going to be able to find a format that works in that. So that’s what’s driven the expansion. You could say, all right, going to nine, are we going to get the reward or bang for the buck on the strength of schedule that would equal the 12 that we currently have?”
On what is the right size for the College Football Playoff...
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t know that that’s a decision that I think a lot of people have got to make. What’s your driving factor? Is it totally revenue? Is it TV? Is it the student athletes that are playing forever? What is your main purpose? I do agree with Commissioner Sankey that we’re not a tournament sport. That’s really not what we are. You can say, well, what about the old 1AA? What about high school playoffs? Theirs are different now. They don’t play as many games as we do in a regular season. So it’s really what’s your driving force, because it could be monetary at the moment we’re in right now, because I’m not for cutting sports. I’m not for hurting other college athletic programs and seeing them dwindle. I think way too many student athletes get opportunities in college because of the, let’s call them Olympic sports or non-revenue sports, and if we have to be the catalyst for that because of the finances, then let’s do it.”On if the best team wins the college football playoff...
“I don’t know that I would say we were a shell of ourselves. We had injuries. They had injuries. Everybody had injuries at the end of the year. But we had injuries after the game, too, that continued on. So you continue to have them as it goes longer. I think that’s true in probably any sport, but also true in football. To say that sometimes the best team doesn’t win the national championship, I don’t know if I agree with that because with what you do now in the playoffs, in the games you have to win, I think the cream comes to the top. The best team comes out and wins. It’s who’s playing the best at the end. It might not be who’s playing the best in the beginning, but that’s who wins the championship. That’s who wins it every year in basketball is the team that plays the best at the end.”
On Jere Morehead’s comments about the SEC going its own way...
“Well, the second part of the question I don’t have the answer to, but I’ve said this for a long time to our president. I’ve been a huge advocate that if we can’t find the rules that everybody plays by, then we should play our own. I’m not afraid of that. I’m not afraid to break away and say that our conference is strong enough to go out now and play. I mean, if we could actually function, and it financially would make our programs more stable and we could support things financially — I’m talking about all the sports — and do by our own rules, I’d be all for that. I mean, I’ve been to this meeting now 10, 11 times, and it’s frustrating at times to say, ‘Well, we can’t do this because of litigation, We can’t do this because of litigation, we can’t do this because we’ll get sued, we can’t do that.’ And we’re just trying to do things for the betterment of the sport and the betterment of the student-athletes, and that’s not curtailing what money they make. I’m not advocating that they make less money. I’m fine with what student-athletes make. I’m trying to make it where it’s as equal and it’s comparable footing for everybody and it’s not a race to the bottom, as they say."
On if the rules are the issue or the people unwilling to follow them instead...
“100%. That goes back to self-preservation, and if I can self-preserve by making my schedule easier, doing this, circumventing the rules. There’s been circumvention of the rules the entire time. There’s always somebody trying to. It’s the policing of that and the navigating to make people follow within the guidelines. And what’s happened with litigation is there are no guidelines. I’ll just go to court, I’ll just go to court, I’ll just go to court on everything — not just player eligibility, but on everything. It’s a lawsuit away from everybody backing down, and so they stripped the power from any regulatory agency that we would put in place. At some point you’ve got to be able to say how do we want to do this?"
On what he would like to see on a national level that he feels can’t be enacted...
“Too many to say. I mean, there’s so many things that I think could be done to make it better if we were servicing similar programs.”
On anything specifically that stands out...
“I think 5-for-5 [eligibility rules] would be good. I think we’ve got kids losing opportunities. I am an advocate of high school kids getting an opportunity to go to college and play, and we’re losing seats and space because of the lawsuit. We were reduced. So I go into these high schools, and teams went from 130 to 105, and everybody goes from 130 to 105, the math is 25 per program. That’s a ton of seats that were lost, and now we’re losing more because kids are staying longer than five years.
“It really started with the COVID deal, so I would start with just don’t take opportunities away from people because it’s going to ruin the game. At a younger age, people are going to flee the game because they don’t get the chance at the dreams and the opportunities that they originally started the game for.”
On if there should be a limit on revenue sharing...
“There is a limit in rev sharing. Technically.”
The reporter acknowledges that there is...
“I know, there is, but there’s not, right? So what’s going to change that if we put a limit on that?
On if a limit should be removed...
“It goes back to everybody’s going to talk about pro sports and baseball and these teams and these teams that spend. I mean, we are like them, but we’re not like them. So you can’t make comparison because of the CBA and the regulatory agencies they have that govern theirs. They operate under a different premise. But we’re becoming them. Our spending is rapidly becoming them.
“Again, my biggest concern for our sport is we’re going to ruin all the other sports. And people say, ‘Well, that’s just the way it is.’ I don’t agree with that because we fund Olympic sports with our program. We develop Olympians. We go to class with people that go throw a javelin. We go sit in class with an extra person that swims and dives. You learn culture by being with those people, but that’s the assumption that we’re talking about student-athletes, which most of y’all would argue in this room, that there is no student in the athlete. I still think the best thing for a young student is to go get a degree and train to be a professional while also training to be a professional athlete, both of those. We’re going to lose that if we keep spending because not everybody can spend at the rate that we’re spending.”
On if the regular season can be weakened by a move to 24 teams in the playoff...
“Absolutely it can. But I want to go back to self-preservation. If you ask enough people, they want an opportunity to be in the party, and if they don’t make the party, they get fired. So then they’re worried about the party, not the dilution of the market.
“So there’s competing interests here that I think are unfortunate. I don’t want it to be a diluted market. I think there’s going to be more blowouts. If that happens, it’s going to happen, but that happened in the old model. I mean, let’s be honest. It happened with 12 before. So you’re not going to get perfect games, perfect scenarios, but there will be games that lose some of their meaning leading up to that. But maybe there’s more great games in the 24-team model than there are in the 12 or the 16. I don’t know.
“I’m not here to decide how many teams should be in it. I would much rather talk about how the teams are decided that are in it.”
On a way for the committee to reward a harder schedule...
“Yeah, the selection process.”
The reporter asks how something could change the committee to make them do that...
“I don’t know that we can change it to make them do that. It’s the integrity of the people that are in that room and the judgment of the people that are in that room who also have biases. And you can say they’re removed, they don’t have to be in there, they don’t have to do it, but they still have people in the room who have biases. And so I don’t know that you’re ever going to have that. You had that same bias when it was four. I got left out of the four several times and thought I had the best team in the country, and didn’t need to go cry about it, scream about it, never get upset about it. It was what it was. You had to accept it. That’s the way it is now.
“So are we going to always be that way regardless of the number? We all know that with the 24, somebody’s going to be left out. I think we saw this year that in the 12, somebody that was on the back end of the 12 almost won it, could have won it in Miami. So we’re going to see more and more some great games. I’m excited about that part, but I don’t know how we solve the selection process because someone will always have argument. You’d like to have it on the field.”
On bye teams being 1-7 in the current playoff structure...
“Yeah, I’ve been involved in that for two of those. Absolutely. I am a big fan of continuing the season in continual motion, meaning taking out the long break. You could say for obvious reasons, but I just think football is played that way. I don’t think football is played to have a 24-, 27-day break. We had that too in the past. I’ve been a part of the long breaks for years at Alabama and Georgia when it was four teams, and we usually were successful with that.
“It’s not a matter of my independent want or need or success. It’s about what’s best, and football is not meant to be played in a month gap. There’s no real competitive sport that I can find anywhere where you take a month off and then continue. That’s just unusual. So solving that in the calendar and moving things up to Week 0 and getting a calendar where it plays throughout, I think plays to everybody’s favor, including the student-athletes.”
*Below is from Kirby Smart’s interview with Paul Finebaum
On the College Football Playoff committee explaining their process...
“Well I think they have an impossible task. To get that right, someone is going to say they did it wrong. I did enjoy it. I’m an analytics and statistics guy and numbers guy. They talk a lot about metrics and things that they use. I don’t know that anybody in the room feels any better coming out, but we’re going to nine games. We’re going to find out a lot here in the next couple of years.”
On missing the 2023 CFP...
“That’s a tough one. Two-time national champ, back-to-back, go undefeated and lose one and you’re out. It’s funny because people say the precedent’s been set and you can’t play in that game and slide out of the playoffs. And I said, oh, yes you can. It happened. It was only a four-team playoff, but it did happen, so it makes it tough. They’ve got a hard job, so whether it’s 12, 16, 24, or four, there’s always been a great debate of who was left out. It’s interesting when you look at the numbers of the teams last year that it came down to. Everybody’s got a really good argument for why they should have been there.”
On playing an extra SEC game...
“Yeah, I got it. It’s going to be very interesting to look back this time next year of what the nine game did because there’s so many people that believe your strength of schedule and all the numbers. Well you can play yourself into the playoffs, you’ve got another opportunity to play a great team. I don’t know if there’s enough belief that that’s actually the case, as opposed to winning all your games, even if you schedule non-conference. Look at some of the models of the teams that have played absolutely nobody non-conference, and it helped them get in. Is it a loss column playoff, or is it a strength of schedule and who you play, does it really matter?”
On the future of big nonconference games...
“If you look at the numbers, absolutely not. There’s a couple stats thrown out in our meeting of teams that have been 20-0 in out-of-conference games and how big a benefit that was for them because they didn’t really play anybody. And then I’m an enthusiast of playing these big games. I think fans want them. I think TV wants them. The players, if you ask them, they want them. But so many people are self-preservation. I have to make the playoffs. I have to make the playoffs. So are we trying to do what’s best to make the playoffs, or are we trying to do what’s best for the fan base, TV, and players? Because the Texas-Ohio State, I mean, how awesome is that? And now we’re all going to run from that? I just don’t think you want to reward that. If we’re not already weighing it enough to play a really good schedule, we need to double that wait. We need to give more emphasis to that because I think that’s what the consumer wants. That’s what the players want. We enjoy those more. I wish you could see more of those.”
On Miami beating Florida and Texas losing to Florida...
“That would probably be true. But, again, those are metrics, and those are only a small portion of the decision-making process. I’m more interested who’s on the committee, okay, who’s controlling the conversations, and how much of the metrics playing into it versus the conversations, the eyeball test, they say, you know, because I’m like, okay, what does this committee consist of? How much football do they know? How much football do they watch? And then how much are they relying on analytics and these numbers, statistics, because that’s a small portion of it.”
On the CFP committee being like a jury...
“That’s what’s concerning to me. I don’t know how much people move. I’m not in that room, you know. I don’t have a lot of input on how things go down and what decisions are made. We hear about stacking teams, you know, head-to-head. That makes perfect sense. But then after head-to-head, it goes to all these other metrics or conversations controlling the room. And I think that’s what the great debate is in the college football, which makes it interesting. It also makes it hard to pinpoint or tell teams why they didn’t get in.”
On what needs to be fixed...
“My biggest fear is that we’re going to lose all the non-revenue sports and all the opportunities for young people to go to college and be student-athletes. Is that fair? I expressed this earlier to the media. It’s concerning to me because I think the experience you have at college is unique. I think when you’ve got a gymnast and a swimmer or diver, a female tennis player, a male tennis player, whoever in classrooms in the same circles with men’s basketball and men’s football, it’s very unique. That’s my biggest thing I want to fix. I want to make sure that college athletic programs continue and get to flourish and you get to see all these great sporting events and all the Olympic sports and all the development we do for our country. I just love that. I love the playing for that. I get nervous that the athletic departments aren’t going to be able to survive. They’re just not going to be able to function, and they’re going to start cutting those down. That might be good for football, but I don’t know if that’s good for all the athletic programs.”
On how much more the sport can take before it breaks...
“I don’t know. I’m not all-knowing enough to understand everything that President [Jere] Morehead is talking about. He is a passionate enthusiast of getting college sports fixed in some way. My concern is that the rate that teams are spending to see our rate, say this is what we were year two, this is what we were year three, this is what we were year four, it is not sustainable. Now, will it ever level off? Everybody said it would level off when the cap came. Everybody said it would even off and spending would curtail. That has not happened, not in men’s basketball and football. That has not happened. It’s continued to grow at a really large rate, which is great for those student athletes. I just don’t know that that’s going to continue and athletic departments be able to function. At what point are we sacrificing their experience? The amount of money we were able to spend on their health care, their lifting, their nutrition, and all the things we had, the mental part is really tough on these kids.”
Is it more difficult to coach in this current era...
“There’s a different motivation. I don’t know. If you get the right kind of kid, it doesn’t change at all. But I was looking uniquely at our class from I think it was 2023, 2022, as they came in and we had some of the numbers of what those guys were coming in at NIL-wise, and looking now, it’s staggering the difference. It’s that rate of growth, but then it’s also how those kids approach things. I don’t think they see that in year 3, 4, 5, that earning power could now be gone, and what am I going to do? Did I get my degree? Did I do all the things outside of football to put myself in the best position? That’s tough, but I know it’s changing, and it’s changing fast, and at the rate it’s going, schools are going to spend themselves out of money.”
On adjusting as a coach...
“I don’t know that my coaching has changed. I think the strategy of the program, the management of things, everybody’s trying to figure out maybe a better way to do it. We’re certainly not as deep as we’ve been in those years, but I don’t think the coaching has changed. I think it’s more about the strategy and the ways we recruit. I mean, it’s changed really fast in terms of how you recruit and what your method is.”
