ATLANTA (AP) — Kirby Smart landed his first coaching job because the price was right.
Simple as that.
“We had only $8,000 to pay a guy,” remembered Chris Hatcher, the coach who gave Smart his break at Division II Valdosta State more than two decades ago. “We were the perfect match for a guy that had no coaching experience.”
From those humble beginnings — overseeing the defensive backs at a small school near the Georgia-Florida line on a poverty-level salary — Smart has evolved into one of college football’s most dominant forces, the $10 million-a-year architect of a budding dynasty.
On Monday night, Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs will try to become the first team in a decade to win back-to-back national titles when they take on upstart TCU in the championship game in suburban Los Angeles.
That the Bulldogs, with a 14-0 record and the Southeastern Conference crown, now have a shot at joining an elite group of repeat champions is really not at all that surprising in the current context of the program.
But when you consider what Smart has done since taking over at his alma mater from Mark Richt in 2016, the journey takes on a far more impressive luster.
The Bulldogs were a very good program under Richt.
Smart made them great.
That’s just what former athletic director Greg McGarity had in mind when he hired the guy who was Nick Saban’s defensive coordinator at Alabama but had never been a head coach.
During the interview process, Smart’s vision of where he wanted to take Georgia was extremely specific, from the staff he wanted to hire to a detailed accounting of the financial commitment needed to take Georgia to the next level.
Still, there were many who questioned if the Bulldogs were making the right move. For every Kirby Smart, there are a dozen Scott Frosts — those seemingly perfect coaching hires that don’t work out.
“Look, every hire is a gamble,” McGarity, who retired from Georgia in 2020 and now runs the Gator Bowl, said Thursday in a phone interview. “I don’t think there’s ever been any AD or president who doesn’t think their hire is gonna be successful … but we all know it doesn’t always work out that way.”
Smart, of course, worked out just fine. Since struggling a bit in his first season, Georgia has posted a record of 72-10, lost only five regular-season SEC games, and — most impressively — supplanted Alabama as the nation’s most dominant program.
Smart was a hard-nosed safety at Georgia in the late 1990s, and his immediate dream was to play in the NFL. But, after failing to hear his name called in the NFL draft and getting cut by the Indianapolis Colts, it was only natural that coaching would be his next step.
His father was a high school coach, and young Kirby had been paying close attention all along the way.
After getting his man for $8,000 — and, really, there was no one else willing to take the job — Hatcher quickly recognized what a bargain it was.
“Once I got to know him and watch him him coach, I realized that — first of all, he’s extremely smart and he’s a tremendous worker,” said Hatcher, now the coach at Alabama’s Samford University. “And he brought to the team —- what’s the right word for it? — yeah, he’s a very intense guy, but it was more of a competitive spirit that he had about him.”
