Kirby Smart still has plenty of hunger to coach entering ninth season with Georgia football

DALLAS—In a mostly empty main media room of the Omni Dallas hotel more than hour and a half before he took the stage for SEC Media Days, Kirby Smart sat down Tuesday on an ESPN set to talk live to host Mike Greenberg in New York.

Greenberg had spent most of the previous half hour of the show talking NFL, but the most prominent college football coach was asked what it’s like nowadays with Nick Saban, the guy who previously fit that description, retiring.

“It’s different,” Smart said.

Saban who sat behind the same desk later Tuesday where Smart was as an ESPN analyst reached out to the Georgia football coach and Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin to get more insight into their teams for his new gig after he stepped down at Alabama.

“I feel like I’m sharing inside information.” Smart said.

Smart’s Georgia football program has been a behemoth over the last three seasons, going 42-2 with their only losses to Saban and the Crimson Tide.

Smart is still relatively young in the coaching world at age 48.

“It's not the years, it's the mileage,” Smart said repeating a line told to him earlier from the Indiana Jones movies. “It's been a great nine-year run for us at Georgia."

Smart probably won’t coach into his 70s like Saban but he seems to have a lot of seasons left in him in Athens and the fire still burns within during his long work days at the Butts-Mehre facility.

“The hunger probably has grown in me from wanting to be with my team more,” Smart said. “For dealing with all the things you deal with now—portal, NIL and all the things you don’t enjoy as a coach—my passion and energy for my players, being around these guys yesterday, being on the field with these guys, this team, every minute you get with them is more valuable. Because that’s what I enjoy. I love that, but all of the other things you have to do outside of it is what exhausts you. It takes more of your time and energy away. The passion of being with the players and this part that we’re getting ready to start, I love that part.”

Smart agreed to a new deal this offseason that pays him $13 million in the first year of the agreement and runs through the end of the 2023 season.

He and wife Mary Beth had their 18th anniversary Sunday and spent it with their youngest son.

“We got to spend that anniversary in the great city of Savannah at a Little League baseball game,” he said.

His 16-year old twins are on separate trips—one in Fiji and the other in Croatia.

“I looked at the globe last night, and it's hard for me because I'm a Southeastern Conference baby,” Smart said. “I'm not a very worldly gentlemen. …I don't think you could be two further points apart from each other than they are right now. But they're enjoying those trips and getting to kind of develop and further themselves.”

With the way Georgia recruits and the drive and ability to develop players Smart has shown, the Bulldogs should be in the new 12-team playoff regularly.

“Coach Smart’s drive is unlike any other person I’ve ever seen,” quarterback Carson Beck said. “You just watch his day-to-day work and you can see it.”

It will be fascinating to see how many more national championships Smart may be able to bring home to Georgia.

Not that it will be easy.

Tuesday’s schedule at SEC Media Days also included all legitimate playoff contenders with Tennessee, Oklahoma and Missouri.

Saban left coaching with seven national championships—six at Alabama and one at LSU.

Smart imbues in his players traits that he possesses.

Here’s what he said about his current team Tuesday: “I think they’re driven to be great intrinsically because that’s what our program was built on is being good year to year not dependant on the previous year. I’m excited as hell about that.”

So the page has been turned on missing the playoff in a 13-1 season last year that followed back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022.

Smart doesn’t stand pat, always adding wrinkles.

“I learned a lot from the defensive guy in the back of the room back there that you're always adapting,” Smart said as Saban looked on.

Smart and his program have many years to pile up more titles whether he comes close to narrowing the gap with Saban or not.

“I guess time," Beck said, "will only tell."