Kirby Smart made about as big a splash as he could’ve hoped for last week.

During Georgia’s bye week, he decided to make a special kind of entrance to see prized Bulldogs recruit Justin Fields in the greater Atlanta area. Smart showed up at the ESPN2 game in a helicopter.

Naturally, the place was buzzing upon Smart’s entrance.

That story hit the aggregation airwaves that night. After all, it’s one thing to visit a high school in a helicopter during peak recruiting season. It’s another thing to do so during a high school football game.

As Lane Kiffin reminded us on Twitter that night, the latter had actually been done before. In fact, Kiffin claimed that Smart “copied our idea at Tennessee” in 2009 when the Vols flipped Ja’Wuan James from Alabama (Smart was the Tide’s defensive coordinator at the time).

I was curious about Kiffin’s tweet. One Google search confirmed that Kiffin’s Tennessee staff did in fact use a helicopter to see James also play in the greater Atlanta area in 2009. James then started in more consecutive games (49) than any offensive linemen in Tennessee history and was later a first-round NFL draft pick.

But I was interested in finding out more about the helicopter “tactic,” and its use in recruiting. I asked a couple questions to a guy who was on Kiffin’s Tennessee’s staff back in 2009. Even better, he was the recruiting coordinator and he was on that helicopter ride in Atlanta.

That guy, of course, was Ed Orgeron.

I asked the current LSU coach and former Vols assistant if he could confirm that Kiffin’s Tennessee staff was the first to show up at a recruit’s game in a helicopter.

“You know what, I don’t know that,” Orgeron said. “I know that it was very successful. We got Ja’Wuan.”

The helicopter method worked on James, but it didn’t work on everyone. Tennessee tried the helicopter method to get Denzel McCoy to flip from Georgia Tech. Unlike James, he stayed with his commitment.

OK, perhaps the better question was why? With countless teams using private jets for recruiting, what exactly was the point of shelling out extra dough and adding a helicopter to the mix?

RELATED: Lane Kiffin claims Kirby Smart copied his helicopter idea

“In Atlanta, there were so many games to go see, and the traffic, we couldn’t figure it out,” Orgeron said. “We just figured, let’s get the helicopter and it worked pretty good.”

“I said it’d be nice if they’d let us circle around the stadium once or twice, and we did. We all had our Tennessee jackets and you could see everybody looking up. It seemed like there were a half dozen college recruiters or more just looking up going, ‘Wow. Look at this. What a great idea.’ It does get the ‘wow factor’ when you show up."
Former Tennessee assistant, current LSU coach Ed Orgeron

The traffic in Atlanta was likely part of the reason, but let’s be honest. Kiffin and Smart weren’t planning on parking the helicopter a few miles away and getting a ride to the stadium.

As Orgeron recalled, the goal was still to walk in like they owned the place.

“I said it’d be nice if they’d let us circle around the stadium once or twice, and we did,” Orgeron said. “We all had our Tennessee jackets and you could see everybody looking up. It seemed like there were a half dozen college recruiters or more just looking up going, ‘Wow. Look at this. What a great idea.’ It does get the ‘wow factor’ when you show up.

“But it was more a means of getting from game to game in a big city.”

It does get the “wow factor.” Smart saw that when the college football world reacted to how he arrived to see a kid play football. It was the perfect way for him to generate some positive, buzz-worthy headlines during the bye week.

As Orgeron said about Tennessee’s 2009 helicopter story, other schools had to think “what a great a idea.” What they might’ve also been thinking is “why in the world aren’t we doing this?”

Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

Not every school can justify spending additional money on choppers. Kiffin’s FAU staff isn’t rolling into St. Thomas Aquinas on a helicopter. But for schools like Georgia, Tennessee and any other program with an ever-growing recruiting budget, why not?

You can rent helicopters in the Atlanta area for between $550-$850 per hour, plus $100-$150/hour in wait time. Sure, that’s a few grand more to add to the recruiting budget. But if that can make a lasting impression on the top quarterback recruit in the country, it’s worth every penny. It’ll pay for itself if he leads the program to a conference title.

And it doesn’t have to be something that’s done often. That devalues it. But why couldn’t the big-time programs show up in a helicopter to see their top two or three recruiting targets once a year?

Coaches already show up to those games wearing their program’s gear because they want to be seen. They aren’t getting seen in the same light as the helicopter coach. That’s for sure.

RELATED: If we’re voting today, Kirby Smart is the national coach of the year

You have to find ways to stand out in the recruiting world. Jim Harbaugh slept over at kids’ houses. Dabo Swinney put a slide in Clemson’s facilty. Even Nick Saban landed a helicopter on high school football fields during his final pre-signing day push. Everybody is going to extra lengths to stand out.

There are only so many letters and direct messages that a program can send. It’s not easy to impress 17-year-old kids who have verified Twitter accounts and play in nationally-televised high school games. Recruits don’t want to feel like they’re just another name on a long mailing list. Selling them on tradition and culture isn’t easy, either.

But I don’t care how numb a top recruit is to all the antics. At the very least, they know that a coach who shows up in a helicopter just to see them play is someone who wants them badly.

Kiffin found that out eight years ago. Maybe Smart did copy Kiffin’s idea after he and the Tide lost James to Tennessee. Perhaps Smart got the idea from watching the news station helicopters provide footage of Fields’ closed-to-the-media commitment earlier in the month. It could’ve even been that Smart saw the impact the helicopter entrance made when he used it to show up at a satellite camp with Harbaugh.

Wherever the helicopter idea originated, it needs to be copied a whole lot more in college football.