12 months later, a reflective Kirby Smart returns to the Sugar Bowl

NEW ORLEANS — This is a city dedicated to excess and good times, but it led Kirby Smart to poignant reflection.

Upon the arrival of the Georgia football team Monday for the Sugar Bowl, memories returned to the Bulldogs’ football coach. At the end of his most recent visit, nearly 12 months ago, he flew home following the death of his beloved father, Sonny.

Sonny Smart died Jan. 4 at the age of 76 after complications from hip surgery. He had injured his hip in a fall in New Orleans before that year’s Sugar Bowl between Notre Dame and Georgia.

His death followed a terrorist attack early New Year’s Day on Bourbon Street that killed 14 people and injured many more.

Almost incidentally, Georgia lost the Sugar Bowl, outplayed and outcoached by the Fighting Irish in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal. The Bulldogs meet Ole Miss on Thursday in the same game.

“It was a different mood, a different time,” Smart said Tuesday at a media day news conference. “Very different frame of mind. You can’t help but think a little bit about last time I was here, what I was going through.”

As Smart left New Orleans, he was headed to a funeral home. He was beginning a new stage of his life, as inevitable as it was surely unwanted. Being back in New Orleans for the first time since then, he said, “it’s a different feeling.”

Life moves forward. Smart passed a different life milestone in December, turning 50.

In October, he took his team to play Auburn, where he had gone to many games in his youth. It was his first game at Jordan-Hare Stadium since his father’s death.

The morning of the game, he took his youngest child, Andrew, to Holtville, Alabama, to show him where his grandfather had been a successful high school football and baseball coach and where his father had spent his first years. Holtville High’s baseball field is named after Sonny Smart, who helped build it.

Smart described his family life there as “two teachers (Sonny and his wife, Sharon) that didn’t have anything coming out of college, and we loved it.”

Smart declined a police escort so the trip, a little more than an hour by car from Auburn, would be just father and son together.

“So we went, just he and I went over, took a picture and had a good time together to try to get my mind off all the emotion and drama built into these games,” Smart said after the Bulldogs had prevailed over the Tigers.

It is hardly only the coach who had cause to reflect upon the return to New Orleans. A year ago, Bulldogs quarterback Gunner Stockton was a relatively unknown commodity, thrust into the starting lineup after starter Carson Beck’s elbow injury in the SEC championship game.

Now he is the leader of the SEC champions, a player who has proved his skill and resolve over and over this season. While 12 months ago, last season’s Sugar Bowl “feels like a lot longer than that,” Stockton said Tuesday.

“It’s crazy how much I’ve grown in a year,” he said. “I just feel more comfortable and more confident.”

As the Bulldogs await Ole Miss for the right to advance to the CFP semifinal, it’s clear that Smart relishes this team.

It is younger than previous editions and not as star-studded. With some of his past teams, he said Wednesday, there was a feeling that they didn’t love football.

“They didn’t really want to be out there and practice like you really want,” Smart said. “And that hasn’t been the case for this group. They’ve had a lot of energy. We’re a little younger, and they want to be coached. They want to be coached hard. They like practicing hard. They get out there and do exactly what you demand of them each and every day.”

The Bulldogs’ improvement over the season is tangible. The defense that was thrashed in its first two SEC games, surrendering a combined 893 yards in an overtime win over Tennessee and a home loss to Alabama, looked far different by season’s end.

Georgia gave up a combined 483 yards in its past two games against SEC opponents, a home win over Texas and the SEC title win over the same Crimson Tide.

In its final three games against power-five opponents — Texas, Georgia Tech and Alabama, teams with a combined record of 29-10 before the Longhorns’ bowl game Wednesday — the Bulldogs trailed for a total of 11:19, all in the first half.