ATHENS — Kirby Smart might be the best coach in college football, but he’s not above having some good-natured fun at the expense of the great success he has created.
Smart, appearing before the Macon Touchdown Club on Monday night, told the crowd he was considering an alternative mode of transportation after having a bumpy flight down from Athens.
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“It was the bumpiest plane ride, windiest plane ride I’ve ever been on, so I was thinking,” Smart said, " Could I have gone in the parking lot, my players parking lot, and maybe got a Lamborghini and drove down really fast?”
The room erupted in laughter with Smart poking fun at notion of him driving a Lamborghini, perhaps with a Georgia High way State Patrol escort, lights flashing, on the highway.
“That’s an inside joke for some of you,” Smart said, “I thought about it, I don’t think I could drive one, I don’t think I could fit in one of those.
“(But) there’s definitely a different parking lot when it comes to players in the world we live in right now.”
Smart’s ability to joke about the money elite players are able to command in what has become a Wild Wild West of free agency and what amounts to salary demands is probably the healthiest thing for him to do at the moment.
It wasn’t so long ago that Smart, and even Colorado coach Deion Sanders, were talking about how NIL was getting out of hand in 2022 when then-Texas running back Bijon Robinson struck a deal for a Lamborghini.
“When you start paying athletes like they’re professionals, you get athletes acting like they’re professionals,” Sanders said back in a 2022 Fox News story.
“And you don’t have staffs large enough and equipped enough to handle a young man with money. Let me go deeper, handle a young man that’s making more money than some of the coaches on staff. You got a real problem.”
Smart said at the time, “I just want to make sure that the game stays at a point where we can control it.”
Smart and his staff have controlled it as well as anyone, winning a second national title that 2022 season, and keeping a unique win streak intact that continues to date back to 2020 -- the last time Georgia lost a regular-season game.
No doubt, Smart has taken Georgia to the top of the college football world, becoming the first and only to win back-to-back CFP while setting an SEC all-time record with 29 wins in the most competitive era in college football history.
That program success has enabled current players like quarterback Carson Beck to reap the financial rewards that come with being associated with Smart’s program, even while Beck has yet to win one as a starter himself.
The Bulldogs’ returning starting quarterback will be back on the practice field today with his teammates working toward building another championship team for the 2024 season.
As for Beck’s Lamborghini, it will likely continue to be closely associated with him and the program, as it represents the riches that talented athletes like Beck are enjoying under current NIL and limitless transfer legislation.
Smart, meanwhile, can continue to be counted on as one of the most fearless public speakers among coaches.
The Georgia head coach does not speak often, but when he does he makes sure to make his point, at times in the most colorful of ways, as UGA fans will recall after a win over rival school Auburn.
