Odds are, if a recruit plays well in the Southeastern Conference, he is going to find it much easier to achieve his dream of reaching the NFL.

That’s been proven time and time again as the SEC continues to set one NFL Draft record after another with the latest record being the league’s 15 first-round selections on Thursday.

With the SEC potentially set to break the record for most selections during the first two rounds of a draft on Friday night, a record the SEC already holds, Kirby Smart said there are still coaches outside the SEC trying to pitch to recruits that playing outside the nation’s toughest conference is their best shot to make it to the NFL.

Check out what Smart had to say during his Friday appearance on “The Paul Finebaum Show” when asked about the SEC’s record-setting showing during the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft.

“It’s a great sales pitch but what gets me, Paul, you probably – well, let me rephrase that – you probably would believe it, but you wouldn’t believe what some coaches outside our conference tell kids,” Smart said during his appearance on the show. “They’ll sell to a kid it’s better to not go to the SEC because it’s too tough. It’s too competitive, it’s too physical, you might get beat up, you might get banged up you might not have as good a career there that you go somewhere else.

“Well, that’s not the way the NFL GMs are looking at it, and that’s not the way the NFL coaches are looking at it. They want to take kids that want to compete at the highest level they want to go play in the big-time matchups, and that’s what the kids want. They want to go play in the biggest games in the biggest places. And that’s what they aspire to do. So, for a coach and maybe another conference the sale that, ‘Hey, it might be a little easier path to come over here and go this way.’ No, it just speaks volumes, you want kids to be able to see through that.”

Simply looking at the SEC draft selections year in and year out, it’s hard to argue otherwise.

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