Kirby Smart, like many coaches, is trying to navigate the new world of college football in the age of immediate transfers. And more than a few people have noticed that Georgia hasn’t landed many transfers.

For Smart, that’s by design, and he said Saturday after the Oregon win that he’s not necessarily anti-transfer. It’s just something that comes into a play if a player can upgrade the roster.

“I think it’s awesome to get a transfer that can help your team somewhere, and we lost out on some guys that we wanted to get,” Smart said. “Once we lost out on the players that we thought improved our team, we weren’t going to take a transfer so that I wouldn’t have to answer a question about not taking a transfer. So we didn’t want to just do it. We wanted to upgrade our roster.”

He then addressed the balancing act between a traditional high school recruit, and a transfer.

“If you don’t feel like somebody upgrades your roster, then don’t do it,” Smart said. “You’re always exchanging a transfer for a high school kid that you could bring in here and develop, and that’s a lot of college coaches’ fear right now. They don’t want to bring a high school kid in because they’re worried they’re going to leave, so you’d better do a good job of farming your own place and make sure they understand that it’s not easy here. It’s hard, but if you buy into hard, you’ll be like those 10 other football players in there that are playing in the National Football League right now that are shaking their hands. They love it.”

What’s Georgia’s sales pitch?

“That’s what we’re trying to sell is come hang out with Travon (Walker), Jordan (Davis), Nakobe (Dean), George Pickens, all those guys, and you’ll be like them one day if you work,” he said. “The kids that we attract are usually the ones that want to stick around and do that.”