Kirby Smart says people are “ignorant” when it comes to expectations for Georgia and SEC in the Transfer Portal and NIL era
Kirby Smart tries to reframe expectations for modern college football in the SEC
The Georgia Bulldogs are 3-0 to start the 2025 college football season. It might not feel like it to fans who have watched all three opening games closely, but believe it or not Kirby Smart and company are indeed still undefeated.
Saturday’s epic 44-41 overtime comeback win over Tennessee certainly didn’t feel like a win for much of the game. The ugly mess of a contest against FCS bottom-feeder Austin Peay had Georgia’s offense stuck in the mud. How is it that Georgia can be undefeated, but yet it still feels like they’re so much worse than in previous years?
Kirby Smart was asked a question this week by SEC media about expectations for top tier programs like LSU, Georgia, and other blue bloods who just don’t seem like they’re as deep or as dominant as they were just a few years back. Why is that? And will it really stay this way forever in the modern era of the college football transfer portal and NIL?
Kirby Smart tries to set expectations straight for the modern era of college football
Kirby Smart has unfortunately had to answer questions on the “depth” of his football team three years in a row now, and it seems like he might be tired of it. However, it’s obvious that he has a firm grasp as to why that is the case.
Over the past few years college football players gained the ability to transfer and play immediately, NIL has opened up a wild west free market for player compensation, and the windows to enter the transfer portal have completely thrown a wrench into team building consistency and predictability. These are undeniable facts that have shaped where college football is today.
However, the expectations of fans and media members have not adjusted with changing landscape. It seems every single year, the expectations for programs like Georgia, Alabama, LSU, and even last year’s national champion Ohio State are that they should be perfect, undefeated, unblemished. That’s just not going to be possible in the modern era of the sport, and coaches like Kirby Smart sound like they’re ready for people to embrace this as a good thing, not a bad thing based on what he said this week. He chalked up any wildly high expectations for perfection up to “ignorance”:
“I don’t know what the expectations are out there. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t pay attention to it. I go into every week and every game knowing it’s hard to win in any conference. But it’s really hard to win in our conference on the road because we deal with a different crowd atmosphere than any other conference in terms of attendance and impact of the game. I don’t know the expectations. So I would just say that it’s ignorance, like people don’t know. People don’t know how good the players are. We as coaches watch the tape, and the tape doesn’t lie. So I know that every game we have is going to be a war because the margins are thin. It wasn’t that the margins weren’t thin before [the transfer portal and NIL]. We had a really, really, really deep, good team. And I don’t think you’re going to see really deep, good teams, but you’re going to continue to see good teams. You’re just going to see less dominance and a little more parity. You see it every day, every Sunday in the NFL. That’s what it’s what people people want to see. They want to see close, big time games.”
The margins to win in the SEC–just like Kirby stated–were already thin long before the drastic changes to college football happened. Now those margins are even more slim. The talent is distributed a bit more evenly. What used to be the depth of the top programs are all playing for their conference rivals now.
Fans and media members need to chill out, recalibrate their expectations, and understand that even teams like Georgia aren’t always going to look perfect. However, the best coaches like coach Smart will still likely find a way to win in the end. Just like they did against Tennessee last weekend.
We’ll be back with more Georgia Bulldogs coverage here at A to Z Sports soon! Follow me (@FF_TravisM) and A to Z Sports (@AtoZSportsNFL) on X for all the latest football news!
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Georgia Bulldogs HC Kirby Smart shared confusing message for the naysayers after win over Tennessee Vols
The Georgia Bulldogs pulled off a wild 44-41 late-game comeback and overtime victory over the Tennessee Vols on Saturday, giving Kirby Smart and his team a 3-0 start to the 2025 college football season. Most coaches would just give their team and the opponent their flowers (which Smart did), talk up the difference makers, and […]
