ATHENS - When UGA Football takes on the Gators in Atlanta (that’s a strange sentence) Jon Sumrall, the new man in charge in the Swamp, will be the fourth coach Kirby Smart has faced in the rivalry.
Auburn ventures into its fourth head coach of Kirby’s tenure in Athens with Alex Golesh (meanwhile your in-laws are still amazed that Hugh Freeze didn’t work out on the Plains).
Ole Miss’ Pete Golding has as many wins over Kirby (one) as Auburn and Florida have combined this decade. He’s the fourth coach at Mississippi during Kirby Smart’s time.
Kentucky’s long-running soap opera with Mark Stoops finally ended after the 2025 season. He had been in Lexington for 13 years.
"This shit's hard," Stoops told reporters last summer at Media Days.
It is.
At only 50 years old, Kirby has become the longest-tenured coach in the SEC. He also now has to rely on optical help to see post-game stats. It happens.
This will be Kirby’s 11th season in Athens, and it is hard to say there’s been a more successful hire in college football over the last 11 years. Ryan Day? Maybe. Curt Cignetti. Right now, perhaps. Bryan Harsin…
You get the point.
FACT: Kirby Smart has not yet lost the SEC title since Saban left in 2023.
At this stage Kirby is chasing history. Perhaps there is a new coach in the SEC that will challenge him in a way that he’s not been since Nick Saban left the arena. Perhaps Texas or Texas A&M’s pursuit of a national title will be fulfilled this year (or soon).
Perhaps the Big Ten has truly eclipsed the SEC once and for all.
(Pause).
He might not like the way I am putting this, but at this point Kirby is chasing ghosts and legacy. Others could be as well, but they have not yet done what he has in terms of longevity and multiple national titles.
Consider that the only person coaching today in college football with multiple national titles right now is Dabo Swinney. How’s that going? Kirby is the only coach in the SEC that’s won the league. He’s one of two coaches in the SEC (Kalen DeBoer) to coach in the CFP National Championship Game.
There was a time the SEC had Saban, Smart, Ed Orgeron and Jimbo Fisher all in the league at the same time. That’s ten national titles plus whatever Jeremy Pruitt was doing in Knoxville at the time.
Two of the guys that won it all this decade are no longer in college coaching (Saban and Jim Harbaugh). Michigan, one of the four programs to win it all this decade, is on its third coach in four years. It looks like UM’s AD is going to get fired this week becuase of things going so well up there.
A Michigan Man.
There is no Woody to Kirby’s Bo. There is no Spurrier to his Bowden. How would that change things? We can’t know. Perhaps Steve Sarkisian will gather Texas and point the Horns in the right direction for good this season - he’s had more success at Texas than anywhere he’s been, but so far he’s only had only one season in five where Texas has lost fewer than three games (2023).
It is hard out there. Mark Stoops was right.
And that’s the point. It is hard, and Kirby has shown that he can do difficult things. The Georgia he took over - the infrastructure, the giving, the players, the coaches - it would not be recognizable today. And that’s in only ten years.
Consider that the first year he was the head coach in 2016, the Dawgs practiced away from their practice facility for a year so the program could finish construction on UGA’s practice facility. Another update to the practice facility will be completed by the start of the 2027 season. It costs $56 million.
UGA’s football facility (space that has a roof over it) cost some $80 million. That doesn’t include the Payne Indoor Athletic Facility.
You get the point.
All of that money is not to cure cancer, but in the pursuit of football wins.
Kirby told his team in 2021: ”We’re not practicing to beat somebody; we’re practicing to beat everybody.”
They’ve about done that, too. Ohio State. Michigan. Notre Dame. Texas. Alabama. The Gators. LSU. Clemson.
This isn’t about any one win anymore. This isn’t about how long Kirby can do this for. This is about how many titles he leaves with when he’s done. And he’s not done yet.
Where are my readers?
