ATHENS — Mike Bobo’s impact on a Georgia football offense designed and run by $2 million coordinator Todd Monken is yet to be known, but Kirby Smart clearly treasures his friendship.
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Smart hired Bobo as an offensive analyst following last season, after Bobo was fired after just one season as Bryan Harsin’s offensive coordinator.
The year before, in 2020, Bobo was the offensive coordinator at South Carolina and ultimately the interim head coach after Will Muschamp was fired.
For Smart, however, Bobo will forever be one of the “Three Musketeers,” along with Muschamp, as their former Georgia head coach Ray Goff once called them.
“We all were brought up the same way,” Muschamp once said, asked about the trio’s commonalities. “I don’t know that any of us were very talented. We overcame that by really working hard at the game and appreciating the game and understanding of the game.
George Bobo and Sonny Smart, Mike and Kirby’s fathers, coached high school football against one another in South Georgia in Thomasville and Bainbridge.
“Mike and I’s bonds are a bit different,” Smart said in a 2016 DawgNation interview. “Our families are really good friends and we’ve known each other all our lives.”
That’s why Smart reportedly tried to hire Bobo in 2020 after Bobo was fired after five seasons as the Colorado State head coach from 2015-2019.
Muschamp won out, per the Athletic report, and Smart ended up hiring Monken.
Smart was talking about his offseason golf game during his SEC Network Sirius XM interview last week and talked about how much fun it is to have Bobo back on the links with him.
Muschamp, Smart noted, ‘hates golf” and has been working out with his son, UGA walk-on quarterback Jackson Muschamp.
Smart, as one might imagine, doesn’t lack for golf partners.
“We have six or seven of us that all played together, and we have a tournament, a little cup we play for whatever year,” Smart said.
“It’s nice to have Mike back on staff, so he gets to jump in and play. He couldn’t play when he was at Colorado State.”
Bobo was the quarterback’s coach at UGA under Mark Richt from 2001-06 before being promoted to offensive coordinator from 2007-14 prior to getting his shot as a head coach.
Smart said Bobo’s relationships around the state of Georgia make him a valuable addition, and as Muschamp’s elevation from analyst to on-field coach proved last season, coaching staff depth is important, too.
“There’s a lot of value in the experiences he’s had. He’s been a head coach, he’s been a coordinator in our conference. He knows our conference,” Smart said when he hired Bobo in February. “The five-hour radius we recruit in, he’s extremely versed. He has a ton of relationships that create value.”
Mike Griffith has covered the SEC for 25 years, follow him on Twitter @MikeGriffith32
