Kirby Smart calls his 8-5 debut season a disappointment: ‘Certainly not the standard I expect’
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Georgia head coach Kirby Smart took part in his second SEC spring meetings Tuesday as the second-year Bulldog coach met with the media in Destin, Fla., to discuss the ongoing graduate transfer debate, the team’s new DJ booth as well as his first season back in Athens.
While it would be easy to assume Smart would be against any changes to the SEC’s current graduate transfer rules, thus potentially preventing Florida from adding Notre Dame graduate transfer quarterback Malik Zaire, Smart revealed he is in favor of changing the rule. Smart’s logic had more to do with an even playing field and less to do with any benefits UGA’s competitors may potentially gain.
Smart on graduate transfers:
“I think it’s nice to have a level playing field against the conferences that we compete against. So I’m in favor of having graduate transfer penalty rules be the same as other conferences.”
Smart on the DJ booth in Georgia’s locker room:
“We went to the players and said, ‘Hey, what can we do to make the experience better in the locker room?’ There’s so much downtime in preseason camp when schools not going on… I couldn’t tell you the first thing about that thing, I couldn’t tell you how to operate it, I can just tell you that they like it and they enjoy it.”
Smart on his first year running the Georgia program:
“Year 1 was disappointing. Any time you finish 8-5 is a disappointment at the University of Georgia, certainly not the standard I expect. I think there was ups and downs in the season, which you have all over the place. There was highs and lows, a lot of close ball games. Guess what, there’s probably going to be a lot of close games a lot of years. That’s our conference. 30 percent of the games are decided by a touchdown or less, so when you have that, there’s going to be tight ball games.
“I think having a true freshman quarterback is a tough row to hoe. Now that freshman is a sophomore. Let’s see how much push we can get on him with competition.”
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
