"Who would you rank as the coaches most important to UGA's success?"
A DawgsCentral user posting under the name PiousMonken posed that question to me in the spring of 2023, and I quickly realized that a good answer would require quite a bit of consideration.
When thinking about the question, I kept coming back to an old football cliche, "It's not the X's and the O's, but the Jimmys and the Joes that make the difference." I found myself considering the players who suit up on Saturdays. Good gameplans and great play calls are key to the success of any college football program, but they are usually only as good as the personnel executing them. With that in mind, I decided to broaden the scope of the rankings beyond members of the coaching staff.
It sparked a series of longform articles called 23 For 2023. The premise was simple- Profile the 23 people who were most important to Georgia’s success on the gridiron in 2023. To create such a list, one must make value judgments on what on and off-field assets are most important to a modern college football program.
It focused on players and coaches within the UGA program. Collectively, the series served as a giant preview for the season ahead. It became a favorite of subscribers, and it forced me to ask questions that I hadn’t before.
This year, I am bringing the list back once again. Naturally, it will be called 24 for 2024.
With his former mentor now manning a microphone on ESPN, Kirby Smart is college football’s most accomplished coach. In 2024, Smart will have to navigate significant staff turnover and seismic changes within the sport itself. Georgia came up short of a third straight national championship in 2023, but winning it all this season would give the Bulldogs three titles in four years. That achievement would cement the program as a modern dynasty.
Whether or not Georgia can reach that lofty pedestal, and how they go about trying to do it, will be largely influenced by the roles these 24 individuals play.
Today we finish the rankings with #1 Kirby Smart. Let’s get after it…
Previous Entries
#23 - Will a True Nose Tackle emerge for the Dawgs?
#16 - Trevor Etienne + #15 - Josh Crawford
#14 - Daniel Harris + #13 - Donte Williams
#12 - Earnest Greene + #11 Stacy Searels
#10 - Malaki Starks + #9 -Travaris Robinson
#8 - Mykel Williams + #7 - Tray Scott
#6 - Colbie Young + #5 - James Coley
#4 - Carson Beck + #3 - Mike Bobo
#1 - Kirby Smart
It’s a hot August afternoon in Athens, and a football program staffer is sprinting up a hallway…
Throughout this series we have looked back at the professional histories and playing careers of many of the biggest figures in the Georgia Football program. The exercise was designed to help us understand the program on a more granular level, and assess how it has grown and changed to arrive at the current moment.
The words “Georgia Football” carry more weight now than they ever have. The program has ascended so dramatically that it has its own identity beyond just the players and coaches that makeup the current organization. At this point, it feels almost like a force or an element. It’s a thing possessing great power. There is a certain level of inevitability to its nature.
In my own lifetime, there have been a few programs like that- Nebraska of the mid-to-late 1990’s, Miami of the early 2000’s, USC of the mid-2000’s, The late-2000’s Florida teams of Meyer and Tebow, and the Alabama dynasty of Nick Saban. Those programs became so accomplished that they rose into the national consciousness in a way where even non-sports fans gained awareness of them. Georgia Football is now in that type of place.
On Saturday, the Bulldogs will face Clemson in their season opener. A victory would give UGA its fortieth straight regular season win, which would be the most since Bud WIlkinson’s teams at Oklahoma won 47 straight games from 1953 to 1957.
Georgia’s arrival at this moment was unexpected for all except for maybe the most optimistic dreamers in the Bulldogs’ fanbase. Smart’s hire was questioned by many in the national media, and the prevailing thought was that UGA’s firing of Mark Richt was a mistake.
On the cusp of his 9th season at Georgia, Smart is responsible for the big gigantic thing that Georgia Football has become. The program getting to the point of winning back-to-back national titles and 39 straight regular season games was the result of his vision. He believed Georgia could dominate, and so it did. He built it one piece of scaffolding at a time, with precision, care, and most of all effort.
The 24 For 2024 series has allowed us to look at the expansion of Georgia Football from hopeful regional powerhouse to national brand. It was Kirby who hired the people that could help him lock down the Peach State. It was Kirby who instilled a culture of composure and physicality. It was Kirby who asked his creation, “Are you elite or not?” It was Kirby who urged it to answer, “Yes.” Next, he looked outward, hiring assistants with recruiting networks in Texas, California, New Jersey and beyond to help ensure winning beget winning.
The disease of more
If you look at the list of college football dynasties listed above, all but one have something in common. They rose to the top, but they didn’t stay there for more than a few years. Saban’s program in Tuscaloosa was the only one that found a way to achieve true longevity. It scaled the mountain in 2009, and it was still appearing in the four-team playoff 14 years later.
A theme emerges when looking at all of the other iconic programs of college football’s last 50 years. The figures involved built something so grand that it touched the clouds. Then they were quickly consumed by the weight of it all. The story of how that happened for each dynasty has its slight variations, but it was almost always a symptom of living life in the brightest of spotlights.
Sometimes it was media related- Jealousy of a star or an intense microscope on off-field behaviors. For some, it was simply burnout and exhaustion of a head coach who had given all of themself while building towards a national title. Other programs became so well known that they attracted attention from the wrong kinds of people. Others still suffered from coaching staff brain drain, as longtime assistants were hired away by other schools hoping to find the same kind of success.
All of them struggled to redefine themselves with so many different people constantly praising the program for what it had already accomplished.
Now, it is Kirby who is responsible for that.
Georgia has a star quarterback in Carson Beck, and he is likely to receive tons of media attention as the Bulldogs navigate a schedule filled with marquee games. Smart will have to navigate that. Georgia has also been the subject of many articles and podcast segments questioning the culture after a string of offseason driving arrests. Kirby has had to navigate that as well. Above all, UGA must navigate the weight of being UGA.
Thousands and thousands of words are written and said about every little thing the Bulldogs do. After UGA’s 2021 national title, offensive lineman Jamaree Salyer reminisced on how his team got to the point of being champions. “Running, scaling these stadium stairs. Just getting ready for the battles that this team would endure,” said Salyer. “That dirty hard work in the dark that I know coach Smart knows what I’m talking about, that gave us these results.”
Football teams are formed in the dark, and it gets harder to find it as the spotlight gets brighter.
The Florida teams of Tim Tebow and Urban Mayer were the subject of a Netflix documentary called “Swamp Kings” that came out in the summer of 2023. The documentary didn’t touch on a lot of the more scandalous stories from that period, but it did take a look at Florida’s 2009 season. Tebow had returned for a senior season after the 2008 national championship, and the Gators were looking to win their third title in four seasons.
They were the most talented team in the sport, but they were fractured by many of the issues outlined above. Despite the internal dynamics and the pressure of expectations, the Gators managed to keep their #1 ranking all season. They arrived in Atlanta for the SEC Championship at 12-0. There they faced an Alabama team that was also undefeated, and still smarting from a loss to Florida in the SEC Championship game a year earlier. The Tide rolled to a 32-13 victory.
In the documentary, multiple players admitted that Alabama was the hungrier team in that game. The Gators were more talented, but the Crimson Tide were more determined. Tebow, the star quarterback and reigning Heisman winner, said this about the 2009 team, “We were so close to doing it, but we were still trying to match the past versus press on for the future.”
Kirby Smart was on the sideline as Alabama’s defensive coordinator in that game.. While many Saban assistants came into the program and went onto other jobs in the ensuing seasons, Smart stayed until leaving for Georgia after the 2015 season. He was a crucial part of helping Saban navigate all the potential pitfalls that the program avoided falling into year after year.
Always forwards
As Kirby has prepared for the 2024 season, he has appeared as aware as anyone that the past is a trap for college football programs that have tasted the type of success Georgia has in recent years.
At SEC media days, Smart said, “I’ve never let a past season’s success or failures inform the next season’s preparation.” That mentality has served Georgia well since winning the 2021 national title, and leaving the past behind has become a central theme of the program’s offseason. Multiple people close to UGA have said that Smart has become obsessed with forward motion.
Not being tethered to the past is such a mental priority that it has begun to manifest in the physical world surrounding the Georgia football program. Staffers have even become cognizant of his desire to not have his forward motion stopped. There are many things that Kirby Smart has achieved at Georgia, but his greatest accomplishment might be creating an entire organization of people that share his own attention to detail.
Within UGA’s facilities, things have been carefully organized so that Smart, and his team, are never stopped by anything but themselves. At one scrimmage, a staffer fretted over the positioning of a post-practice snack table in the tunnel that Georgia would use to get on and off of the field. The individual made sure that the colleague manning the table had it pressed all the way up against a wall. A clear path must exist at all times. One cannot move forward if one cannot move forward.
Smart’s process oriented approach of coaching focuses on making sure that every detail is done correctly. The result is not of concern. The result will take care of itself.
UGA will start 2024 in the same building where its three-peat bid was foiled by an SEC Championship loss to Alabama. It’s the same building the Bulldogs will look to return to for the 2025 College Football Playoff National Championship on January 20th. At noon on Saturday they will kick off their season against the Clemson Tigers in Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
What will happen over the ensuing four quarters of game time between the Dawgs and Tigers is not of concern. What will happen over the ensuing four month college football season isn’t either. If all goes according to Kirby Smart‘s plan, he will have his program focused on the rep it's about to take. It will not be thinking about the brightness of the lights or how to match the past. It will be focused on the rep that is in front of it. Then they will focus on the one after that. The result Is not of concern. The result will take care of itself.
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