Georgia football coach: Kirby Smart isn't the inside business way

College football is a business.

But the University of Georgia's increasingly likely hiring of Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart to replace fired head coach Mark Richt highlights how businesses and teams diverge on leadership. Schools often don't have a named successor waiting inside their organization when coaches falter.

Head coaches are essentially CEOs. But in big business, grooming a clear bench of replacements is often considered one of a CEO's most crucial duties. Unplanned leadership changes tend to be extra costly, inject uncertainty (hello, UGA recruits?) and lead to weak results, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. Of course, Smart could turn out to be different.

How big of a business is Georgia football and how much difference can a new CEO make, whether in business or the game? Find out what a professor who has analyzed thousands of CEO changes has to say, in the latest Unofficial Business column on myAJC.com.

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