Georgia coach Kirby Smart pushed back on the narrative that he and fellow coaches are frustrated and trying to leave college football.
That includes Nick Saban, who was Smart’s mentor, and whose reason for retirement is being inaccurately blamed on the changing landscape, according to Smart.
“I think there’s been a lot of media portrayal that had something to do (with him retiring). The man was in his 70s,” Smart said Monday night, while speaking before the Macon Touchdown Club.
Saban, 72, retired in January, and last week appeared at a Congressional roundtable when he shared concerns over players leveraging the transfer portal to get more money through name-image-likeness. Saban indicated the changes may have been a contributing factor in his departure, but didn’t outright blame it.
Smart worked under Saban for nearly a decade before becoming Georgia’s head coach in 2016, and has since won two national championships.
Amid the changes in college sports, and frustration over roster management and the timing of the transfer portal, an emerging narrative was college coaches trying to bolt.
But Smart, 48, dismissed that narrative when asked Tuesday before his team’s spring practice.
“I don’t have a lot of coaches complaining, saying they want to get out of the profession,” Smart said. “They enjoy the profession.
They want the profession to be about relationships, developing talent and rewarding positive performance, both on and off the field.”
Smart, who is set to earn nearly $12 million this year, also pointed out that college coaches are also being paid very handsomely to deal with all the headaches.
“There’s certainly higher stakes and higher pay than there’s ever been for college coaches, across the board,” Smart said.
“I mean the guys making money and making livings that coordinators can retire now, they don’t have to get a head job.
You look back even 10 years ago and how much it’s changed for coaches. There’s no crying out there from my end. I want what’s best for the student-athlete.”
Smart said he has long favored players getting paid through NIL, and also favors revenue sharing with athletes, increasingly seen as an inevitability. Saban also endorsed that idea, and Smart praised his former boss.
“He put more kids in the NFL than anybody in the history of college football. What he gave to the game, I think we should all listen and understand what he believes in,” Smart said. “The concerns aren’t just necessarily about NIL. It’s about the way it goes about that I don’t love.”
A major concern for Smart is how the current system — or lack of system, because of lack of regulation — leaves older players getting less money than younger ones, i.e. freshmen and others who leverage their recruiting status or the portal. That can “destroy your team from within,” according to Smart.
“Sometimes I question the system that we have now if it’s best for the student-athlete,” Smart said. “It’s not necessarily best for the sophomore, junior or senior.
It may be best for the freshman. But it may not be best for the sophomore, junior or senior. I would love to see a little more fair system for the players in terms of within the players.”
Smart didn’t say whether his team was afflicted with such internal concerns. The outward evidence is that it hasn’t, as the Bulldogs have won 46 of their last 48 games, and are set to be the preseason No. 1 team.
In fact, the player with the most well-known earning power has been a fifth-year senior, quarterback Carson Beck, whose acquisition of a Lamborghini served up a joke for Smart to make when he spoke in Macon.
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