HOOVER, Ala. — Kirby Smart felt the need to interrupt.

The Georgia coach, after 25 minutes of questions from the media contingent in Hoover, hadn’t cut off any reporter to that point. The politically correct, buttoned up, Waffle House-loving coach was true to form. The Nick Saban disciple resembled his former boss about as best he could.

(Really, all of Georgia’s SEC Media Days representatives took that approach. If you were hoping to learn something new and interesting about Jake Fromm, Andrew Thomas or J.R. Reed, SEC Media Days was not the place for you.)

But when a questioned started with “Nick Saban’s assistants or former assistants are like 0-16 against them, or 0 and something,” Smart had to interrupt.

“I’m well aware,” Smart said, which drew a laugh from the media members in attendance.

Good.

Good, not because Smart’s self worth should be based entirely on how he stacks up against the greatest college football coach of all-time. Good because it’s the elephant in the room. That is, getting over the Alabama hump and winning Georgia’s first national championship since 1980.

You know what wouldn’t have been good? If Smart simply took the podium and bragged about how many games his team won the past 2 years, or how he beat every SEC East opponent by at least 14 points during that stretch, including a pair of blowout wins against Florida. That would have been the last things Georgia fans would have wanted to hear about.

Well, they probably would have loved hearing Smart brag about that Florida dominance.

Instead, they heard Smart talk about “the aggregate of marginal gains.” What in the world is that, you ask? Let him explain.

“We’re always looking for the aggregate of marginal gains, and I want to explain that simply like we have to our players, we take a situation like the PGA Tour and look at 2017 in the PGA Tour and we say, here’s Brooks Koepka and here’s Justin Thomas, these guys were .5 strokes apart, meaning they were half a stroke difference in their play over 86 rounds,” Smart said. “So that’s ‘that much’ difference between each one.

“Their earnings that year, $5 million difference, which is pretty significant. It’s a lot of money, but we’re looking for the aggregate of marginal gains.”

I’d bet that $5 million difference that nobody else is making that kind of a reference at SEC Media Days.

That’s because nobody is in Georgia’s position. That is, minutes from taking down Alabama twice, most recently of course in the SEC Championship.

It was a different feeling than last year at SEC Media Days when the Georgia conversation was centered around “2nd-and-26.” That was one instance. One frustrating, classic Georgia way to watch a season come up just short. Now, it’s 2 consecutive Georgia seasons that have ended in frustrating fashion at the hands of Alabama.

It’s a thing. Whether Smart wants to come out and say “Alabama is our goal” or not, that’s at the root of every big picture discussion about his team.

Smart did share one specific insight as to how Georgia plans on taking down Alabama.

“Get rid of their backup quarterback” isn’t quite Georgia’s rallying cry in 2019.

For this Georgia team, it’s “do more,” which is about a billion times better than Florida State’s #DoSomething rallying cry in Year 1 of the Willie Taggart era. “Do more” is simple, and easy to understand as it relates to the elephant.

Smart explained exactly what he meant by that:

“We like it because we understand how close we’ve been to taking the next step. And although 24 and 5 the last two seasons is good, it’s not good enough. It’s not where we expect to be at the University of Georgia.

“Our mission is to bridge that gap, you know, by the actions we take, hence the word “do more,” those words require action. And I heard a quote coming in here. I read a quote coming in this morning that really grabbed me, and I’m not a big quote guy, but when I heard that quote, I thought that’s something that our players can relate to ‘life has no remote. You got to get up and change it yourself.’

“And if you think about that, so many of us want to take the easy way out, whether it’s changing the channel with the remote or anything else, not doing the work that has to be done, we want to do more at the University of Georgia. We’re not complacent in what we’ve done, and we know we need to take that next step.”

“We know we need to take the next step.”

Alabama is the only step. And sure, Smart wasn’t about to step up to the podium and say “Alabama is our lone focus.” That could be twisted into Vanderbilt bulletin board material for that season opener.

But with all due respect to the Commodores — Smart did say he felt like Vandy’s Big 3 (Ke’Shawn Vaughn, Kalija Lipscomb and Jared Pinkney) had been there for 10 years — they aren’t the motivating source for this Georgia team. It’s not Florida, despite what the offseason chatter would tell you. It’s the team that has everything Georgia wants.

Smart didn’t have to say “Alabama” 100 times to make that point . There’s not a Georgia fan on planet Earth who doesn’t have bigger and better things in mind. Is that pressure? Of course it is.

As Smart says, “pressure is a reflection of ambition.” If Alabama weren’t the goal for Georgia, there wouldn’t be any pressure on this program to take down arguably the biggest elephant that any major program has in its room in 2019.

Part of this is Smart’s elephant. That became more evident than ever after the fake punt debacle that served as a microcosm for Georgia’s big game collapses. Was Smart trying to outthink Saban and try to become the first disciple to take him down? Perhaps. Clearly, Smart wouldn’t mind being the first to do that.

Then, no question will prompt him to interrupt.