Kirby Smart discusses coaches dealing with multiple seasons during NIL, transfer portal era

Kirby Smart loves football season, as in actually playing the games and practicing during the fall. It’s the other seasons for him and other coaches that made them all adapt.

With the transfer portal, coaches have to worry about player retention and of course, NIL plays a factor into those decisions. As he said, the coaches signed up to coach football, not necessarily recruiting outside of the traditional windows.

But as Smart knows, it’s adapt or die.

“It’s made it ever changing,” Smart said on Get Up. “It’s like there’s these seasons. The season of football is about to start and we all love that as coaches because that’s what we signed up for. The season that starts somewhere around November in December of retaining your players is critical. Now you’re looking at possible free agency early in the middle of a season where an NFL team wouldn’t have to worry about that until a later date.

“So you’re constantly managing things, communicating more, you want to be on top of it, don’t let it manage you, but it’s different and you know? The fact that our players are making really good money now, I think that’s a great benefit to them. It brings on other issues and other problems when they get that money, but I’m happy for these guys and their families. They earned it. They have a great revenue stream through our university and they represent our university when they go out on the field. So they have to do those things the right way.”

Also during an appearance on Get Up Monday, Paul Finebaum provided high praise for Smart.

“They are what Alabama was about five or six years ago,” Finebaum said. “They have it because they have recruited at such a high level. Kirby Smart in his late 40’s is Nick Saban in the absolute prime of his career.”

From 2009-12, Saban won three national championships. If Smart wins another national championship in 2024, it will be his third in the last four years, paralleling Saban. Moreover, Smart will have a better overall record during the four-year stretch.

In the past three years, Georgia posted a collective 42-2 record. In comparison, during the first three years of Saban’s legendary four-year run, Alabama lost four games. Obviously, Alabama didn’t have as many wins because there was no four-team College Football Playoff.

Seems like Smart adjusted just fine.