Kirby Smart Called His Shot | Why 2016 G Day Was so Important
ATHENS - There are moments when it looks like a head coach is going to be successful.
Jim Donnan had a four-overtime upset of Auburn in 1996. Mark Richt’s moment was one of Larry Munson’s best call: Hobnail Boot. Both were lightning bolts of what could be in year one. Vince Dooley slammed his way into his second season by shocking the Bear and No. 5 Alabama 18-17 before taking out No. 7 Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Later that year the Tide would later claim the national title.
Kirby Smart shared his vision before his program ever took the field for a regular season game. It was January 2016, and during the first half of Georgia’s 76-73 overtime win over Arkansas, Smart paraded recruits around Stegeman Coliseum.
Moments later he let ESPN’s Roy Philpot in on what he had in store for later that spring.
“We want 93,000 people at the spring game,” Smart said on air. “I want to challenge every fan to come out. That’s the easiest thing out there to recruit behind. If we have everyone behind us it makes it that much easier to recruit.”
Boom.
Kirby laid down a marker for what Georgia could and should be. The former Alabama assistant coach was trying to jump start a program that had come too close too many times to filling its potential, but never hoisted the trophy that mattered most.
Stacking Sanford Stadium with 93,000 fans for a spring game had seemed unimportant. It was something you might make fun of… but Kirby understood that Georgia needed to reestablish itself as a program. And that it was a big deal to be in Athens - spring game or any time.
2016 G Day became an event… not an afterthought. Kirby sold his vision, and it worked.
But one shouldn’t underestimate the star of the day - Jacob Eason. Tall, long, full of potential and loaded with the burden of being the player that was supposed to save the program, Eason had played 3,000 miles away - north of Seattle in Lake Stevens, Washington.
Eason had a significant arm talent, but like any freshman quarterback in the SEC, he was raw. Eason was stepping into a no-win situation. The fantasy Georgia fans had been chasing since Hershel Walker’s performance in 1980 was that a true freshman could come in and not just save the program from a disappointing season from the year before, but lead the Dawgs to a national title.
Everyone wanted to see Eason, and see if he could live up to massive expectations. And he wasn’t bad that G Day. He was 19 of 29 for 244 yards. The crowd erupted when he entered the game - the place nearly exploded when he hit a long pass on his first drive.
The only other event I can compare 2016 G Day to in terms of anticipation was the Blackout of Auburn in 2007. In both cases nothing was guaranteed, but both times Georgia fans delivered for what the head coach asked.
The Blackout was a surprise… 93K Day wasn’t. One could argue that the Blackout was peak Mark Richt at Georgia - a fearless team with an attitude throttling one of its rivals at home. It was an amazing afternoon in Athens.
But one has to ask, too, if Georgia would have had the success it has under Kirby without 93K day. I think it is a reverent question. But the answer is yes, Georgia still would have had success without Sanford being crammed with Georgia fans that April afternoon.
What Kirby brought to Georgia was that no one player would determine the season for the Dawgs. Eason went down in 2017, and the Dawgs won the Rose Bowl and the SEC. In 2021, JT Daniels went down, and the Dawgs won the national title. Fans lost their minds when those things happened - not knowing they would be losing their minds with a special season that year.
2016 G Day was, in a way, the death of the fantasy Georgia fans have always had about Hershel… or the idea that any one player could come in and change things. What 2016 and beyond proved was that no one player was going to do it.
Georgia wouldn’t just need a stadium packed for spring games, but a program packed with players, too.
