Booger McFarland: Kirby Smart ‘has done less with more maybe than Mark Richt’
By SDS Staff
Published:
Throughout Kirby Smart’s Georgia tenure he has been compared to his predecessor, Mark Richt. ESPN analyst Booger McFarland was the latest to compare the two in an unflattering way.
“If you are a Bulldog fan and you are going to sit there and stare honesty in the eye – Kirby has done less with more maybe than Mark Richt,” McFarland said, as shared by the official Twitter account of “The Paul Finebaum Show.”
Smart is five seasons into his UGA tenure, his first head-coaching job. Media outlets and users on social media platforms have frequently compared Georgia’s record under Smart to what it was after the same amount of games under Richt.
In Richt’s first five seasons, the Dawgs went 56-13. Smart’s record through five seasons is 52-14. The records are not a complete apples-to-apples comparison as Richt’s tenure did not include an all-SEC season lacking “cupcakes” as the 2020 season did in which Smart’s squad managed to go 8-2 (without a scheduled game against winless Vanderbilt). Richt also did not take Georgia to the national title game, though Richt’s 2002 squad would have almost certainly been part of a final four (13-1, ranked No. 3 in final AP Top 25).
Georgia decided to part with Richt after a 9-3 season in 2015 feeling a new coach (Smart) would take the program to the next level and bring home the first national championship since 1980. Dawg fans and rivals alike are watching closely to see if that will be the case or if Smart’s critics will continue to echo McFarland’s point made Friday.
–@ESPNBooger “If you are a Bulldog fan and you are going to sit there and stare honesty in the eye – Kirby has done less with more maybe than Mark Richt”
— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) January 15, 2021
Saturday Down South reports and comments on the news around the Southeastern Conference as well as larger college football topics.
