99 wins after ‘iconic’ 2018 Rose Bowl, Kirby Smart isn’t here for nostalgia

ATHENS — How can you not be romantic about the 2018 Rose Bowl?

Between the picturesque setting, the Georgia and Oklahoma legends playing in the game and the Bulldogs turning a 17-point deficit into a double-overtime win, that game represents all that makes college football great.

Kirby Smart punctuated the win with a fist pump, BOOM and cuss that would make even former Georgia co-defensive coordinator Will Muschamp laugh.

Yet much has changed for the Georgia coach and college football since that iconic game.

Smart has a little bit more gray in his hair, in addition to occasionally bringing reading glasses to his news conferences. He was a fresh-faced protagonist in his second season as Georgia’s head coach on Jan. 1, 2018.

He’s now 50 as Georgia faces Oklahoma for the first time since one of his most memorable wins.

Add in the transfer portal, NIL, deeper conferences and an expanded College Football Playoff field and you can understand why Smart, when asked this week, wasn’t in the mood to look back. The sport that existed in 2018 is long gone and almost certainly not coming back.

But really, Smart knows nobody cares about the 2018 Rose Bowl if Georgia loses Saturday.

“It got us to the national championship,” Smart said dryly when asked what the win meant to him.

The 54-48 win was the high point of Smart’s second season. The Bulldogs would not win the national championship that season. They would have to wait another four seasons to do that, finally winning it all in 2021.

“Although we didn’t win it — and probably should have and could have, but we didn’t — the fact that we did that after the season we had the first year, it validated some things in recruiting,” Smart said. “It gave a lot of confidence to younger players on that team.

Smart is now in his 11th season at Georgia. The win over Oklahoma was his 21st as a head coach. He’s won 99 games since then.

Lincoln Riley was the head coach at Oklahoma for that game. He figured to be a future foil for Smart, with Riley a well-regarded offensive coach juxtaposed to Smart’s defensive acumen.

The Sooners were members of the Big 12 at that point. They would later schedule a home-and-home against Georgia, prior to Oklahoma becoming an SEC member and defensive-minded Brent Venables taking over for Riley, who had left for USC.

“I really was not thinking of that game coming in here today because the staffs were almost entirely different, even ours for the most part has changed,” Smart said. “I think we’ve got a couple guys leftover from that staff. I know they probably don’t have any. If they do, I don’t know who they were in terms of overlap. It was an iconic game because of what it meant and what it led to and where it was played.”

Venables was coaching in a College Football Playoff semifinal on Jan. 1, 2018. He just was the defensive coordinator at Clemson, as it played Alabama after the conclusion of Georgia’s win.

They’ll meet Saturday as conference members, with one program exiting the famed Sanford Stadium hedges with its first conference loss of the season.

In between the two meetings, NIL has risen, conferences have morphed together and Nick Chubb has completed a wonderful and successful NFL career.

As an example of how much things have changed, Smart actually revealed this week that he now considers quarterback Baker Mayfield, a villain from Georgia’s first game, a friend.

For as different as things look for both Oklahoma and Georgia, the effects from their first meeting still resonate within the Georgia program.

“It was just a heck of a win,” tight end Lawson Luckie said. “I mean, there was a dogfight the whole time. And I feel like a theme of Kirby’s Smart’s era, just like pulling it off late in the game, finding a way somehow.”

The College Football Playoff was only made up of four teams when Georgia and Oklahoma played. Now — because of a current 12- and potentially 24-team playoff — the Rose Bowl will only host quarterfinal games, as it wants to cling to its Jan. 1 time slot. Whoever wins this year’s Rose Bowl won’t go directly to the national championship game, but instead a College Football Playoff semifinal in either New Orleans or Miami Gardens, Florida.

The players in Saturday’s upcoming game understand that the 2018 game was important. But they may not recall in an instant Tae Crowder’s squib kick recovery or Jake Fromm’s touchdown pass to Javon Wims.

“I don’t remember, like, the whole (game),” linebacker Terrell Foster said. “I just remember how intense that game was, like how close it was. I remember growing up — I don’t think I watched the game live, but, like, seeing bits and pieces of like how, like, cutthroat each team.”

Luckie and fellow Bulldog Drew Bobo are exceptions, as they come from tried-and-true Georgia families. Both their dads played at Georgia. They knew a Georgia program that wasn’t accustomed to winning games of that magnitude on a frequent basis.

Smart has little time for that nostalgia. Not just because he understands that the conditions of Georgia’s first-ever game against Oklahoma no longer exist, but also because of where the program is now.

A win to get to the national championship wouldn’t be viewed as a novelty. The Georgia coach knows how to act in the moments after a thrilling victory because he’s been there before.

In the event Georgia wins Saturday, the Bulldogs will have another SEC foe on the horizon. But that game won’t be played on a Monday night with a trophy on the line.

Instead, Smart will have to get his team ready for an early kickoff against Vanderbilt. There will be no race against time to get back from Los Angeles, as Smart was famously yelling at his team to hurry out of the postgame locker room and get on the team plane.

Next week comes all the same. There’s no romancing an SEC grind.