And we certainly feel like this is the best team in the country that we have an opportunity to play, the most consistent team all season long, in terms of how they played. “He’s done an outstanding job making that program what it is. “I think the University of Georgia, Kirby’s program, is probably one of the elite programs in the country,” he said next to Smart at the head coaches’ news conference Sunday at the JW Marriott. Georgia quarterback JT Daniels and head coach Kirby Smart walk off the field after the 41-24 loss to Alabama in the SEC championship game.Ĭredit: Curtis Curtis is not something about which Saban gloats. The Bulldogs rolled into the conference championship game as 6.5-point favorites over Alabama and promptly lost by 17. Those are the two words that have punctuated every sentence about Georgia’s accomplishments during Smart’s six-year reign. 1 team for eight consecutive weeks, logged their first undefeated regular season since 1982 and Smart was named the SEC coach of the year. The Bulldogs, who were the nation’s consensus No. This 2021 Georgia team was Smart’s fifth straight team to finish in the top 10 of the CFP rankings, earn a New Years Six bowl berth and fourth to appear in the SEC Championship game. That’s certainly helped shape me as a coach.” You take a lot of things from the places you come from in your history. “There was (also) a year at LSU, a year at Dolphins. “As far as the way we organize and run the program, most of that came from my time spent with Coach Saban,” Smart said Sunday of his Alabama influence.

Smart has done that, admittedly, by adopting the organizational template he learned from Saban at Alabama and applying it to the considerable potential that UGA always has had.

But during his tenure he has lifted Georgia to place it hasn’t been since Vince Dooley landed Herschel Walker in the spring of 1980 and won a national championship and three SEC championships in a row. You want to be calm, collected, composed, attack and play our game.” But we’re not trying to make it an emotional thing, where you go out playing with emotions. “You can’t really run away from the truth. It’s the truth,” said the senior from Atlanta.

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