Kirby Smart explains how Georgia keeps players during NIL era: ‘Proof is in the process’
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Kirby Smart’s record speaks for itself at Georgia, and it speaks loud and clear.
In just over a decade now in Athens, the 50-year-old has already put a heavy stash of hardware inside the trophy case.
The 2 national championships in 2021 and 2022.
And the 4 SEC crowns, including the past 2 years, with his top-ranked wrecking crew of a team going for an SEC championship 3-peat in 2026.
Smart is also a 3-time SEC Coach of the Year, winning in 2017, 2021 and 2022.
Naturally, Smart could’ve won that award in more than just those 3 seasons, but everybody gets the point — especially recruits and then the players he develops. And that is Smart has set a very high standard at Georgia that helps the Bulldogs not only compete but thrive in the high-stakes, high-pressure NIL era.
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As Georgia closes in on yet another possible SEC title and another shot at that 3rd national championship for Smart in Athens, the coach spoke to ESPN ahead of Week 11 about how he keeps those players in Athens during the big-money NIL era.
“I think we sell what we have to offer. The proof is in the process, because when you put up there on that screen all those guys who have gone on to play in the National Football League, and most of them didn’t play right away as freshmen … (these guys) grew into the roles they had,” Kirby Smart said.
“Every day we start a team meeting with some kind of development feature … it gives some self-worth to those guys who might typically be jumping to the portal. We’re trying to say that you’re going to be the guy to come here and keep doing what you’re doing.”
What Smart and his staff have been doing over the past decade has worked like a charm, before the NIL era and especially now during it.
And there just might be some more hardware coming to Athens at the end of this season, using that Smart winning philosophy.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
