Kirby Smart brushes off Ryan Silverfield’s past comments about Georgia arrests
By Jacob Moss
Published:
After taking care of their first 2 opponents of the season, the Georgia Bulldogs will finally be kicking off their SEC schedule this Saturday when they hit the road to take on the Arkansas Razorbacks.
The Hogs, who will enter the contest at 0-2 on the year, are in their first season under new head coach Ryan Silverfield, who came over from Memphis following the firing of previous Razorbacks head coach Sam Pittman. The new head man for the Hogs actually stirred up some controversy last September while still coaching at Memphis when he took a public jab at Georgia over the program’s long list of player arrests for speeding.
Generally, on a Sunday afternoon when we meet with the team, we do 2 things,” Silverfield said last year. “We always start with ‘not our standard.’ We always start with a negative. And the ‘not our standard’ is, ‘Georgia wide receiver arrested for driving 900 miles per hour over the speed limit.’ Right? That’s a weekly occurrence.
With Silverfield’s first game against Georgia now on deck, those comments were dredged up once again over the weekend, and Kirby Smart was asked about the topic during his Monday presser. According to DawgNation’s Connor Riley, Smart brushed off his counterpart’s previous comments, saying that it was “much ado about nothing.”
“Yeah, that’s much ado about nothing,” Smart said. “I mean, he chose to talk about what he wanted to talk about. He apologized about it. He wasn’t really; I think he was talking about generalities. All coaches, we show things other schools do to make mistakes, to try to educate our team. He’s trying to educate his team, and it’s everything he said, but that’s over and done with for me.”
Silverfield also publicly addressed the jab during SEC Media Days in July, saying he meant no ill will toward Smart and that he had great respect for the 2-time national champion.
Smart’s comments suggest he has also no ill will toward Silverfield, and that he and his team will be all business when they head into Razorback Stadium this Saturday to take on the Hogs.
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