Georgia coach Kirby Smart spoke Tuesday at the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Florida. Here is a transcript of his answers to media questions:
On Georgia’s recruiting budget...
“I think there’s a little misnomer to that. You’d have to really study the numbers, and I don’t know how much you guys dig into accounting methods, but we don’t have a school plane – let’s start with that. If somebody has a school plane, let’s say they take 100 flights in that plane, they’re not counting those 100 flights. We might make 100 flights that we purchase, so our recruiting numbers are imbalanced based on that. Now, do we spend on recruiting? Absolutely. The SEC schools spend on recruiting. Is it necessary to be competitive? It is, and our administration has been great about supporting us. The numbers that people put out, some of those are eye popping and catching where some people are counting their numbers a lot differently, especially with flights, which is our No. 1 expense.”
“I don’t know that, I want to be efficient, and we make decisions and we’re conscious of budgets and we try to be smart so I’m not trying to sit here and – we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to compete.”
On tampering as an issue in recruiting ...
“Look, I’m not one that gets deep into these issues. People have hot-button topics that they want to talk about, they’ve got a word that they want to talk about. I think tampering’s been going on for a long time. It’s probably more prevalent because it’s so much more easy to transition from one school to another by way of the portal. So look, if kids are exploring to leave, it’s really hard to police. Ask the NCAA. If a kid goes to his trainer or high school coach, well, in our program we have people talking to those trainers and high school coaches. Word of mouth spreads that a guy’s not happy, and he’s looking. Next thing you know he’s in the portal, and he’s already got somewhere that he wants to go. I don’t really get caught up in it. I worry a lot more about my roster and say, ‘How do we manage the people that we have so that they don’t want to go somewhere else?’ I focus on that, not – a lot of these teams have people on their staff that go out and watch the opposing team on the field to write down how they look, how they run. They’re surveying the field for the portal. We’re not that elaborate. We’re going to try to focus on our guys, and retention is probably more important to me.”
On how much time he spends on roster retention ...
“Yeah, that’s tough. We spend a lot of time on connection and having conversation. ‘Where are you? Are you happy with where you are? If you’re not, what can we do to improve that and improve you as a player? Do you think that you’re being developed?’ If they feel like they’re being developed – and they have examples of guys who have been in our program, I always throw (former Georgia linebacker) Quay Walker out because he was a kid that never started until his third year and went in the first round (of the NFL draft). Most kids are ready to leave if they’re not starting by their third year. That was a great example. It’s a lot more energy now in terms of spending with your own roster and just trying to maintain it. It’s not just the portal. It’s the combination of the portal and the NIL and everything going on that makes it at times excruciating.”
On if he would like to see penalties for clear cases of tampering ...
“Well, there are penalties for tampering. Most of the time, if they have a clear case, there’s something done about it. The problem is it’s hard to police that, and it was hard to police that before. It’s distributing, it’s upsetting. People want to blame the coaches for the tampering. A lot of times it’s the player that is negotiating or looking for greener pastures. Sometimes they create the tampering. It goes both ways. It’s hard to police. We have not been a major portal team, I could be telling you something those 12, 13 or 14 other (SEC coaches) come in here and say is a major issue. I’m not trying to go out and get anybody else. I want to get a kid from high school and develop him. Now ultimately if we have a deficiency somewhere or we have spot available, then we’ll look to use the portal. But it’s not something we’ve done a lot.”
On whether the SEC should keep its eight-game conference schedule or expand it to nine games ...
“Most overrated conversation there ever was. Four years you’ll play everybody home and away. I get it, the traditional rivalries, you have three‚ you have two, you have one. You guys need something to write about bad when you start writing about this. It’s not that big of a deal to me. You have to win your games to advance. You need to be in the (SEC Championship game). That’s a lot better topic for me, is somebody going to get an advantage by not going to the SEC Championship game, but making the expanded playoff. That’s a lot better topic to me than eight or nine games. I think you’ve got to win your games, and now more than ever it’s going to be that way because there’s not going to be divisions. That’s true for both.”
On if Georgia-Auburn is played every two years if the SEC sticks with an eight-game conference schedule ...
“It’s going to tough because there’s so many people that want that historic rivalry including me. I was part of that rivalry. I grew up as part of that rivalry. I think it’s one of the best there is, but I think it’s one of the costs of progress bringing two more teams in. One of the costs of scheduling, getting more balanced in term of you’re going to play everybody. It’s not just going to be Georgia-Auburn. It’s going to be somebody else for somebody else. Sometimes you call that progress. Sometimes you upset the fans. I think that’s good debate in terms. You traditionalists want those rivalries and others want to see you play the teams they never get to see you play and you can’t have both.”
On why does everyone else get riled up about playing eight games versus nine ...
“I can’t honestly tell you that. I don’t know why people get wrapped up in it. I think with the nine, there’s the three permanent, and that creates a lot more debate because teams are like, wait, I’ve got to play them. I’m concerned with who I have to play. Well, I’m looking at it like you’re going to probably play one or two of those three anyway because it’s going to circle so quickly. You can go 10-year history, 20-year history, five-year history, three-year history. Pretty much in the SEC it changes outside of what Alabama has done. (During) the time (coach) Nick (Saban) has been there, it’s really been cyclical. It will probably over the next 20 or 30 years be the same way. I don’t get caught up in it a lot.”
On non-SEC teams making the College Football Playoff and SEC teams penalized for losing the SEC Championship game and if it makes you re-evaluate a championship game ...
“If it happens like you said it, then probably so. I don’t know that that would happen. It used to be you got penalized what bowl game you got sent to when you lost the SEC Championship game. They put a thing in place to say if you lose the SEC Championship game, you can’t fall further than this. I would think that we would have a system set up that if you made that, and we’re not talking about divisions now, divisions were different. You’d have two really strong teams over there and one OK over there, and they’d play each other. That happened some. I know when I was at Alabama there were teams in the West that were sometimes better than the team that won the East. That’s not going to be the case. The two teams that go, I’m looking at it from a competitive disadvantage of you might have to play one or two weeks later after just playing that game which will be the most physical game the whole year.”
On the recruiting calendar in terms of the national championship beginning next season and the impact ...
“You’re saying because the national championship game will fall a week later, the concern there? Not a major concern for me because I think they’re going to change the dates around that, OK? There’s some answers we still have to get in terms of, OK, what’s going on with the portal while these playoffs are going because kids need to be able to go and pick their schools. What about when schools start? A guy’s playing on this team, but he’s leaving, and they’ve started school over there. There’s problems inherent with that, and now you’re extending that one week. They’ve got to figure that out. Going to campuses around Christmas.
“There’s a lot of things that’ve got to happen in regards to that, but I’m not as concern about recruiting because they’ll make that fit it. And the best thing you can do in recruiting is what? Win. These guys got mad at me (at the SEC office), and (Kentucky coach Mark) Stoops told them, ‘There’s no crying from the aisle’ because I was complaining about something (about) having to play and not being able to go do these recruits. Well, if you’re playing, then you’re getting free advertisement. That’s probably a good thing.”
On going for a third championship and blocking out the noise about surpassing Alabama ...
“First of all, I don’t hear that a lot and second, I don’t measure our program based on their program. We measure our program on doing the best we can do, and that’s doing the best job we can each and every year. Our success is based on how we work out, how we perform, how we run, how we turn over the ball, how we convert third downs. It’s really that simple. It’s not based on the other program. I’ve got a lot of respect for Alabama and everything they’ve done, but it doesn’t have anything to do with us.The focus for us has to be on us.
On new players coming into town and the message to them as it pertains to recent arrests of DeNylon (Morrissette) and Marcus (Rosemy-Jacksaint) ...
“Players coming in are basically being put into our team setting tomorrow, maybe tonight, and they’ll get visited with our other players. But as far as putting those guys, integrating those guys into our team, we have team meetings, we go over the team rules, all that stuff, but it has nothing to do with the other. One has nothing to do with the other. My biggest concern is what are guys doing when they are not with us.
They’ve been home, for what, three weeks now? That’s been a big concern; it’s a big concern when they’re with us.”
On doing anything more to stem the off-field issues...
“Education is the first thing because everybody wants to know what the punishment is. Players know what the punishment is, and that’s important for our players to acknowledge and understand. I want to educate further and make sure they understand. No one is more embarrassed than Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint and his parents. They’re crushed. But Marcus has to learn from this, so does DeNylon.
“Part of being an 18, 19-year-old young man, a 20-year-old young man is learning from mistakes. I was that age once, too. We don’t condone anything. They’ve got to do a good job of making good decisions off the field, and we’ve got a lot more education things lined up about that. But it’s not just about that, it’s about everything that they can get into as far as gambling, drugs and alcohol and treatment of the opposite sex. We’ve got sons of speakers that come in during our summer speaker program and we’ve ramped that up.”
On gambling education …
“Like I said, ours is strong. We’ve had issues with that in the past, too. It’s more prevalent. I can’t turn the TV on now without seeing something. There’s a lot of debate out there about what’s right and what’s wrong, but the NCAA rule is pretty harsh for gambling relative to some other things. It’s pretty obvious why. They don’t want that infiltrating teams. There’s a lot of states, including ours, where that’s been a great debate, whether to allow it to come into your state. Well, it’s more about revenue for the state; it’s about protection for your schools. But kids can do this regardless of what state. It’s easy access. I see it everywhere. We try our best to educate the players and, sometimes, it’s takes somebody having a pitfall for somebody to learn from their mistake.”
On if players understand the gravity on the situation when it comes to gambling ...
“I don’t know that they completely understand it. I think what’s happening now is it’s becoming much more prevalent, and they have to because of what you just said. I didn’t even understand the app. I didn’t even know because I don’t gamble. I don’t bet. I don’t have those apps. Well, when you go start researching it — and we were researching it really in the last year — I mean, these kids, there’s like Chinese baseball games and stuff that people are gambling on. It’s like, what? They’re betting on horse racing in another country. It’s literally crazy how easy it is and the access they have to it, and then the punishment you have to ask yourself, ‘Oh my gosh, this guy could lose his entire eligibility forever for betting on a horse race, you know, in another country.’
“We had these same cycles back when the coaches were doing the NCAA (Tournament), the guys that got in trouble for filling out the tournament bracket. I mean, education is a key in making sure they understand the rules and they have the discipline to follow them.”
On if an injury report worth talking about or if it will be talked about to curtail inside information for gambling …
“I honestly have no clue. I mean, look — I don’t know how it’s commoditized. I don’t understand that, OK? If everybody’s giving an injury report, I have no problem giving an injury report. They do it in the NFL. I was in the NFL. That’s not a huge deal as long as it’s a level playing field. A lot of the issues that are created in college sports today are based on an imbalance because one state has this and another state has this, and we go back to the same thing. We need great leadership. We need somebody to come along and say, ‘This is the way it’s going to be done’ and everybody adhere to it and then we can do it.
“Will that stop gambling? Probably not. Will it stop guys from trying to get inside information? Probably won’t, but the NFL has it as just as well.”
On if he’d like to see college football players being allowed to gamble on stuff that they’re not involved in (NBA, Chinese baseball, etc.) ...
“I have to defer to somebody else that knows ‘cause I really don’t have an opinion on that. I hope that our guys would be fiscally responsible that they would choose not to do that, and you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Are these kids that are 18-22 years old smart enough to know the difference?’ And it scares me. I would not want our players doing that at all whether it was legal or not. I would rather their money be in something a little safer than in gambling.”
On the changes to the game clock in terms of not stopping on incomplete passes …
“No, I think it’s another one that I think there’s a lot to do about not much. I mean, they did a lot of studies at least in our league and don’t think it’ll change but 2-3 plays per game. I do think the game’s getting long, and this is an attempt to try to make it a little more efficient for the fan and the viewer, which is a big part of what we do.”
