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ATHENS - For the second-consecutive season, Georgia Bulldog coach Kirby Smart has assembled one of the youngest teams in college football.
As crazy as it sounds, that’s exactly what Kirby wants.
While the Indiana Hoosiers won last year’s national championship with one of the game’s oldest rosters, Smart said this week at SEC Media Days that he has no plans to change his approach.
“It's just ironic to me because I remember saying last year how young we are, and I said, "We'll be young again the next year." And then guess what? We're young again. So I, you know, I think coaches come into one of these things and they say, "Well, we're young. It's like an excuse. No, we're young, but it's not an excuse.”
Kirby’s right. He did say that last year. And as it turns out, maybe they were too young on defense to be a national championship-caliber team.
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But here we are in 2026 and Smart’s saying the same thing. They’re older than they were last year, but they’re still young at wide receiver, parts of the offensive line, and at tight end.
So while they’re older on defense, there’s still plenty of youth on the offense and across the roster.
But again, that’s not an excuse. Kirby Smart’s the longest-tenured coach in the conference. If they’re young it’s because Smart built the roster that way. He’s not going to bring in 20+ transfers each year. He doesn’t want guys coming in who may have been developed the wrong way somewhere else for the past two or three years.
Smart wants a roster full of HIS guys. Guys HE recruited. Guys He developed. Guys that HE believes can help them win a championship.
The Georgia head coach believes that still starts on the recruiting trail.
“We're gonna be young every year because we still believe in a high school model. We're 27 freshmen, 27 sophomores, 26 juniors, so we're at like 30% of our roster or something is freshman, sophomore, and juniors. Then the rest is other for the fourth year and fifth year, and it's a low percentage of it. But I knew last year when I sat here and said we're really young that we'd be really young this year, too. Now, I don't think we're as young this year as we were last year, but on paper we are. It's just in different spots.”
Now we have to ask the question. The same question we’ve been asking for a couple of years now.
Is this model sustainable? Can younger teams make a national title run in an era where programs are building older rosters? Can you assemble a championship roster with just nine incoming transfers? Is the high school recruiting model still how you build a powerhouse program?
Time will tell, but there’s one thing we know.
While Kirby Smart does have a stubborn side, he also knows where the game is going. He knows what a championship roster looks like. He knows how important roster retention is. He knows how to develop, and he knows how to win.
The Dawgs may be younger than most, but that’s not an excuse. The standard is the standard, and that isn’t changing in Athens anytime soon.
