Is the world of recruiting getting to be too overwhelming for coaches in the SEC?

Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart certainly made it seem so in a recent interview with the guys on 680 The Fan, when he expressed some frustration about the amount of time that coaches spend on recruiting.

Some of his candidly honest quotes, as transcribed by AL.com, give a glimpse into what he says many of the coaches around the SEC may be thinking.

“It never stops. It’s 365 recruiting. That cell phone you’ve got, these smartphones are the death of college coaching. Every college coach I talk to won’t say it on record, but everyone’s thinking, ‘should I go to the league?’ Because you don’t have the same requirements. It’s different. The hours are different.

“The recruiting is non-stop. My phone? I’m on the boat today and it blows up non-stop.”

Smart goes on to describe how he receives text and Twitter messages from recruits at all hours of the night, infringing upon both family time and sleep.

He isn’t the first guy to cite a lack of family time as a potential motivating factor for leaving the SEC.

Back in 2009, former Florida coach Urban Meyer resigned briefly citing heart-related concerns, before calling it quits in Gainesville for good following the 2010 season to spend more time with his family.

“At the end of the day, I’m very convinced that you’re going to be judged on how you are as a husband and as a father and not on how many bowl games we won,” Meyer said at a campus news conference.

“I’ve not seen my two girls play high school sports. They’re both very talented Division I-A volleyball players, so I missed those four years. I missed two already with one away at college. I can’t get that time back.”

Meyer has obviously since abandoned his retirement and won a national championship at Ohio State.

So what is the alternative for these coaches?

Smart points to the downtime built into the off-season by the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement as an attractive option for coaches that feel worn down by the 365 day per year nature of recruiting.

We have seen several of the SEC’s more prominent coaches dabble in the NFL in the past, but guys like Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier have returned to the college game after limited success there. Former Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino is another that chose to return to the college grind after finding that the NFL was not for him.

But others, like former USC coach Pete Carroll and former Oregon coach Chip Kelly, have left championship-caliber college programs for the NFL and never looked back. Former Penn State coach Bill O’Brien made it just two years as a college coach before returning to the NFL lifestyle.

In Smart’s case, you have to wonder if the quotes from this radio interview will hurt his case to become a head coach at the college level. He has long been considered one of the top head coaching prospects in the nation and one of the tireless workers in the world of recruiting, but the idea that he’s considering a move to the NFL would certain give a university a reason for pause before giving him a massive contract and the keys to their kingdom.

That being said, if more coaches step up to publicly voice an opinion similar to Smart’s, it could become a rallying point for change in the way recruiting communications are restricted at the college level.  To this point, it has become so hard to effectively regulate that it is almost impossible to enforce any sort of restrictions.