Former Tennessee Vols QB Peyton Manning Wanted to Pick on Kirby Smart
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ATHENS - Tennessee Vols quarterback Peyton Manning was ready to pick on Georgia Bulldogs defensive back Kirby Smart.
"If we could ever get this safety, No. 16, in 1-on-1 coverage, we could throw on him all day.”
Yikes.
That’s what Manning wrote in his notes early in his career at Tennessee according to reporting from the Knoxville News-Sentinel. No. 16, of course, was Kirby Smart.
But what I can’t get past - almost 30 years later - is that Peyton Manning, who has been as involved as anyone in not named Phil Fulmer at his alma mater, was never able to successfully lead the charge to pick Kirby as the Vols’ head coach when Tennessee had the chance.
And Kirby would have taken the Tennessee gig early last decade. It was something Georgia insiders were concerned about and had a very close eye on at the time. But the Vols never seemed interested in Kirby - and that was not an unreasonable position in 2012.
I’m not suggesting something I don’t know - I certainly don’t know that Manning ever advocated Kirby be the coach at Tennessee. I don’t know that Kirby or his agent Jimmy Sexton ever had a meaningful conversation about the current UGA coach taking the UT job back then.
But I am certain that Manning has been disappointed with the carousel of coaches that have been at Tennessee since Fulmer left: a one-year stint with Lane Kiffin, Derek Dooley, Butch Jones and then the firebomb that was Jeremy Pruitt.
Things have been unstable at Tennessee for a while now.
Remember that Kirby started making the head coaching interview rounds in 2012 after Auburn let Gene Chizik go that winter. That means, for certain, there was a window where Kirby could have made the move to Knoxville and settled in as head coach. It was the exact cycle the Vols took Butch Jones as their head man.
Jones, in many ways, made sense for the Vols. He had been successful at Cincinnati - turning a 4-8 team into a nine- and then ten-win Bearcat squad. And unlike Kirby, he had head coaching experience. And let’s not act like that’s not a big deal because it is.
Also, Kirby was 36 when the Vols hired Butch. That’s pretty young. Kirby could probably do ten pushups in a row back then.
Still, what would Kirby have accomplished in the last eight years in Knoxville? There’s no way it would have been as bad as it has been on Rocky Top from 2013 on… right? The Vols are 50-46 overall and 24-40 in SEC play since Dooley was fired.
It feels like things have been worse than that for UT - maybe I’m living too much in the moment.
I’m assuming it would have been better under Kirby because he would have worked the recruiting trail to get the Vols better. But maybe I’m giving him too much credit. Maybe I’m giving recruiting too much credit (I’m not). Maybe at 36 Kirby would not have been ready to be a head coach in the SEC.
Maybe. I’m not sure how anyone could know - talk about what-if scenarios.
Back in the mid-1990s the Vols were rolling with a future Hall of Fame signal caller who was eager to pick on Georgia’s future head coach. If only he could have found a way to get his school to pick that better-than-average-but-no-Champ-Bailey defensive back to be the head coach in Knoxville. Tennessee had its chance.
Things would be completely different today.
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