Kirby Smart says losing Oklahoma game is 'cost of progress'
Kirby Smart would’ve loved for defending back-to-back national champ Georgia to test itself with an originally scheduled matchup vs. Oklahoma early this season.
However, Smart isn’t dwelling on the past and still gleaned some positives from Georgia’s 48-7 victory vs. UT-Martin.
The contest with the Sooners was cancelled because of Oklahoma’s eventual jump into the SEC in 2024, as confirmed by commissioner Greg Sankey.
While it was disappointing to Smart to not be able to play a quality opponent such as Oklahoma, he’s thankful to be of service to a smaller program such as UT-Martin.
“Level of disappointment, I don’t know that I would describe it as that. Unfortunate, cost of progress, there’s benefits and there’s offsets,” Smart said. “The benefactor of that situation is probably UT-Martin and how much their coach appreciated the ability to come play at our place.”
The former assistant at Valdosta State has a special place in his heart for small programs that are grinding to make ends meet.
“And give his kids an opportunity for a program and every one of those kids that played in that program and in that conference, they can’t survive without games like that and he was very appreciative of that,” Smart said. “That’s probably one of the benefits of it in terms of the grand scheme of football and people involved.”
Georgia continues its quest for a 3-peat with a home matchup in Week 2 vs. Ball State on Sept. 9 (12 p.m. EST/SEC Network).
Cost of progress? Weird definition of progress.
Nobody cares what Liberty Bowl fans think. Wait for baseball
Idiot.
I thought Tennessee was an “Everything School”. Shouldn’t you be excited about Baseball too? Ohhhh…that’s right. Zero Championships in the sports that make up, well…everything lol
Well by progress he means expansion and I think he’s saying it tongue in cheek.
MattyJ, I just posted a similar thing. I should have hit the expand comments button before posting, LOL.
There may be more than a few UGA fans secretly happy we are not heading to Oklahoma this week.
No I was praying for this game since I live here in Norman, would be finally able to see my Dawgs play.
Y’all got enough cupcakes until you get to us. No need to embarrass ok while they are a cake
Tn is included when they say our schedule is all cupcakes
Make sure you keep that same energy all season!
we’ve had this energy going on seven years now
Bullsh it! You have been the most whining fan base for the last 40 years because your team sucks and couldn’t win the big game and now that you backed in to 2 Natty’s you think you run the place! LOL, get real you inbred POS.
Georgia has more consensus national championships in the last 20 months than Tennessee has in the last 70 years.
It has been 2,531 days since tennessee has won a game against UGA. sit down, boy.
LOL, from Tennessee fans, this is a real hoot. Remember 2016 and the miracle it took for UT to win even that game? No miracles since, not even any close games since and last year, making UT #1 just before our game could not have come at a better time for UGA fans and players. The total disrespect was duly noted and taken care of.
Still doesn’t make what I said any less true! LMAO
Weak, weak puppy fans! And 2014, your mom sure wasn’t screaming boy last night!
>weak fans
>literal hillbilly can only think about s*x with a mom
pot, meet kettle. lol what’s the matter, all out of mustard to throw?
This is the kind of response that prevents clever retorts.
Excellent.
Kirby Smart seems to be a gentleman.
Yes indeed.
“The benefactor of that situation is probably UT-Martin and how much their coach appreciated the ability to come play at our place.”
… has a special place in his heart for small programs that are grinding to make ends meet.
Give me all ye struggling cupcake small programs, come play at our place, get blown out, pad our schedule, get your check, no need to play real schools when we are gentlemany enough to help you out
LMAO
hahaha real schools, like Florida?
FL being so terrible is one of the main reasons our schedule is so weak.
Lol, exactly. Georgia is so dominant that the only thing our rivals can say is that our schedule is weak.
And they are on our schedule.
Glory days, indeed.
I agree with what you say about Florida being so terrible it drags down your SOS, same thing can be said about your other rival Auburn. Now we don’t know yet how terrible UF & AU will be by the time we play each other. More importantly and to the point you choose to ignore, Auburn played a real school in UVA and so did we with Utah. Now you could have found a weak P5 school like UVA or any other at the bottom of their P5 conference instead of T-Martin, Ball Sate and UAB. But then again if you did so King Kirby would be unable to help out those small cupcake programs he cares so much about
So in other words, you STILL aren’t aware that UGA was scheduled to play at Oklahoma this weekend, but the game was cancelled with OU joined the SEC.
Good grief, do you live under a rock?
‘98 they’re either trolls or willfully ignorant. The fact that these bonehead comments come from long since vaulted teams makes me want to believe that they’re the former, but then again they come from very casual fan bases, so they could just as equally be the latter.
It is literally in the headline.
I didn’t ignore it, just didn’t think it was necessary to repeat something that was covered within the first 3 sentences of the article you are commenting on.
Congrats on playing a non-conference road game outside of FL for the first time in over 30 years though!
jones full dumbassery on display.
Real…Yes I do believe Kirby began his coaching career at Georgia Southern as I recall and Muschamp was there also. So yes he has a feeling for the small program head coaches who sweat it out with very small budgets and do their best to win games every year.
Not Georgia Southern, they started at Valdosta State. Very big difference. Southern is D1 FBS. Valdosta St. is D2
Oops ! You ae correct, it was Valdosta State.
125 years of Florida Gator football and only one 20 year stretch has ever amounted to anything. Other than Spurrier and Meyer, every UF coach has been a failure. But keep up that track record, we love it!
My oh my how sensitive and defensive is the SDS contingent of the 2 time national champions. Guess that’s the toll of 40 years of futility. But sure let’s all pretend the main reason Kirby plays cupcakes is to help those small programs get a big payday. Kirby, King and humanitarian
UGA winning 34 of their last 35 games, and 5 Playoff games (google it, I don’t have time to explain what those are) sure are alot of cupcake games.
A better word may have been expansion although a case can be made that expansion is progress.
I hope Ball State appreciates this opportunity too.
What I don’t understand is why Georgia-Oklahoma had to cancel their series and Alabama-Texas didn’t? Makes no sense to me.
OK-UGA was a home and home out of conference series. If they kept the games the second game would not be able to fulfill that part of the contract. The upcoming AL-UT game will complete the home and home for that series before UT joins the conference.
The Texas-Alabama series will be completed by the time Texas joins the conference in 2024.
Hope this helps it make sense.
Kirby is happy to have as weak a schedule as he has.
33-18
Nick is happy to get UGA back in T Town for the second straight home game with the DAWGS. Sort of like Auburn getting the same consideration some years ago. I wonder when it will be Georgia’s turn for that good scheduling?
For all the rival fans, b itching about the Dawgs schedule. A weaker schedule comes around only every now and then in the SEC. When it happens, that team better be ready to take advantage of the opportunity.
Next year it will flip, and the Dawgs will be playing one of the hardest schedules. GOOOODAWGS!
“For all the rival fans, b itching about the Dawgs schedule.”
It’s all they got right now.
The funny thing is, a lot of the fans b itching are on their schedule.
I don’t think UGA has anything to worry about trying to schedule a quality opening or early out of conference game lately or in the future.
They could Google it if they really wanted to know.
Kirby Smart proposed to play the #2 team every week this year, but they all declined.
Greg Sankey’s bank account is seeing progress
LOL!!!! Oh Poor Kirby, how sad, you got to skip a challenge for a CAKEWALK game! Progress??
PS: Almost as bad as the Vols skipping out on playing Army.