Kirby Smart Knew He Had To Address the Damar Hamlin Situation With The Georgia Bulldogs

LOS ANGELES - When Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered from a cardiac arrest last Thursday, the football world froze.

As the Bills’ medical staff administered CPR on the field to save Hamlin’s life, concern and anxiety flooded the country. From family living rooms to high school locker rooms, an uneasy feeling was left with everyone aware of the situation.

With the Georgia Bulldogs' National Championship matchup against TCU only a week away at the time, the last thing the head coach Kirby Smart wanted was for those feelings to linger with the team.

It needed to be discussed. It wasn’t something they could sweep under the rug and hope players would forget about it—there had to be an open dialogue on the situation.

“Thank goodness we have Ron Corson,” Smart said, “He immediately reached out to me… He said we need to address it with our team.”

So they compiled every resource they could think players could need after such a traumatic moment.

“The very next morning, the first thing we did was bring in a mental health specialist, we brought in an athletic trainer, we brought in a team chaplain,” Smart said.  “We prayed and we also addressed it from a mental health standpoint.”

Even beyond the grief, Smart and his staff wanted his team and coaches to fully understand medically what had happened to Hamlin and what had caused it. Smart had Corson sit down with the team and explain the situation, while also adding a key detail—how UGA’s medical staff was prepared if the same situation ever came up.

“Ron educated players on exactly what happened,” Smart said. “You have to have people in place to save lives, and what an incredible job they did on the scene to make sure that he has an opportunity to recover from it… The education piece was important to us to ensure our players that the safety measures are there.”