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Kirby Smart shares hilarious Georgia-Florida story from his playing days
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Florida made its first trip to Sanford Stadium in over 6 decades a memorable one. For Gator fans, that meant a Georgia thrashing in Athens. For Kirby Smart, a return man at the time for the Bulldogs, it meant getting his head bashed in for hours.
“At the point we kicked off the seventh time, nobody was blocking,” Smart remembered.
On Oct. 28, 1995, Florida went to Georgia and did exactly what it hoped to. In a 52-17 win, Steve Spurrier’s squad put “half a hundred” on the Bulldogs. At the time, Spurrier said he’d been told no other team had done it before and he wanted to be the first. So, despite leading 45-17 with just over a minute to play in the game, Florida threw the football and ran it up.
The Gators led 21-0 after the first quarter and 28-3 at halftime. When Smart went on SiriusXM radio on Friday to talk about the annual Georgia-Florida rivalry shifting away from Jacksonville once again for the next 2 seasons, he shared a personal memory from that game.
“Spurrier is always coming over to me talking, ‘Yeah, I set the record for scoring points.’ Whatever it was. Everybody forgets. That was 7 kickoffs. Guess who the kickoff return guy for Georgia was that year? You’re looking at him,” Smart said. “Seven kickoff returns in 1 game. And brought them all out.
“The headline picture after the game, it was 10 guys form tackling me at once on kickoff. … It was like boom, boom, boom. I had 7 kickoff returns. Broke a record. That means you’re really bad on defense.”
In 1995, Smart was the Bulldogs’ leading return man. He is credited with 15 kickoff returns during the 1995 season. Georgia held 7 of its 11 regular-season opponents under 30 points that season, and the 2 previous teams Georgia faced heading into the matchup with the Gators scored a combined 9 points.
Smart probably needed an ice bath in the worst way on Oct. 29, 1995.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
