Humility Despite Success
Conventional wisdom suggests that a coach needs at least three superior recruiting classes to pave a path to the top – to the national championship game. In just his second season, Smart had Georgia playing for the national championship.
Already, in the space of eight years, Kirby Smart has established himself as one of the outstanding football coaches in history of the state of Georgia. The highlights that doting alumni fawn over, and the high marks dished out by the national media, however, do not turn his head. He is driven by pride in his team, not ego.
Photo Kelly Courtney
As a young man who turns 48 this month, imagine what he might accomplish, given the current circumstances surrounding him. He has already won two national championships and was runner-up in another.
Recruiting has never been better in Athens. Not in 1939 when UGA began a memorable era with Frank Sinkwich, who would win the Heisman Trophy in 1942 after beginning his career with the “Point-a-minute Bullpups.” And not in 1965 when Vince Dooley, in his second season, recruited Bill Stanfill, Outland Trophy winner; Jake Scott, MVP in Super Bowl VII; and Billy Payne, who spearheaded the plan that enabled Atlanta to host the 1996 Olympics and subsequently brought about stunning change to the Augusta National Golf Club as its chairman.
To reach the head of the class in Georgia, Smart must first be compared to two men at his own school, Wallace Butts and Dooley. In the early 1940s, Butts appeared to be headed toward a dynasty with two superstars, Sinkwich and Charley Trippi, but World War II brought a screeching halt to the momentum that Butts had begun.
Dooley, with freshman Herschel Walker in the lineup, went undefeated in 1980 and effectuated visions of more titles with No. 34 having three more years of eligibility left. But the Dawgs lost in the Sugar Bowl to Pitt on New Year’s Day 1982 and lost again to Penn State the following year in the Sugar Bowl before Herschel jumped to the USFL, breaking Bulldog hearts with the same devastation that he broke tackles for three years.
Conventional wisdom suggests that a coach needs at least three superior recruiting classes to pave a path to the top – to the national championship game. In just his second season, Smart had Georgia playing for the national championship.
The Bulldogs’ Wallace Butts won his first national title in his fourth season with Sinkwich and Trippi. It took Vince Dooley 16 years to claim a national title. Bear Bryant had been a head coach for 16 years when he won his first championship at Alabama. It required eight years for Woody Hayes to win his first title, at Ohio State. It was the same for Dabo Swinney at Clemson. Darrell Royal needed nine seasons to win his first trophy. And then there was Bo Schembechler who won 13 Big Ten championships and 194 games at Michigan but never won a national title. John Wooden had coached basketball at UCLA 16 years, 18 overall, before he could claim a championship ring. Then he won nine more for a total of 10.
Everybody believes in the long-standing saw that you can’t win without the “hosses,” and Kirby Smart is as compatible with that view as any coach who has ever placed a whistle around his neck.
But there is the view of those who know anything about coaching that the “hosses” must have a leader, and the constituency in Athens is confident that the Bulldogs have the best in the land in Kirby Smart.
A day after defeating Alabama in Indianapolis in January 2022, these words appeared on a bulletin board in his office – How the mighty fall: Pride born through success.
Then opposite of that preachment was – How the mighty stay mighty: Humility despite success.
Pride in alma mater reigns supreme to him. He is a proud native son, saying, “I have a passion for bringing pleasure to my home state and the University of Georgia. I want to bring Georgia the recognition it deserves.”
When he turned in for the night after the 2021 championship game, he was thinking about the fact that the ’21 season was over, and he was already into planning for 2022. He had turned the page.
A year later, winning it all again in January 2023 was a not-so-surprising encore. Smart spent the entire four-and-a-half-hour flight home from California planning for 2023. How ‘bout this Dawg!
Loran Smith is a veteran sportswriter and longtime UGA sidelines reporter.
