Syndication: Austin American-Statesman

Q: Speaking of a guy that’s been in your program since the beginning, you were with coach Saban so long. I know he worked with you there. Talk about the development of Glenn Schumann and what he’s meant to your program defensively and what he’s helped you accomplish thus far. 

Smart: “First off, Glenn Schumann is an incredible man and person. He’s a graduate of Alabama. He came there on the Bear Bryant Scholarship. His dad played football at Alabama. He is the son of a football coach. He is extremely bright, extremely passionate. I rely heavily on Glenn for input on practice schedules, defensive design, thinking outside the box. There’s not a time when I think of who can I ask on my staff that understands what we want and what we need, Glenn Schumann is that guy. He’s very talented. Glenn Schumann will be the first to admit he came to the University of Georgia without ever getting an on-the-field coaching position, and I was very confident in his role to do that. What has he done with that? He has produced one of the most productive inside linebacker rooms in the country, and he’s one of the people that really believes in growth being a part of his process, and he continues to grow to this day.”

Q: No. 1 recruiting class, back-to-back natties, more kinds in the league in your first seven years than any my coach in the modern college ball era. That being said, with all those accomplishments is there anything you improve on as a coach? And also, before you answer, I don’t know who this guy is, but he told me y’all are going 7-5 before she handed me the mic.

Smart: “So going back to the original question of you want to know what we can do better or what I can do better, well, there’s a lot of things we can do better. We can play much better pass defense late in the season. We can grow as a team and continue to get better on our special teams assets. It’s like a constant improvement for us, right. Better never rests. We firmly believe that. We’ve done a lot of studies this off-season at things we can do better and things we can improve on. Our kids understand that, that we don’t want to be just a football factory. We want to produce people that are quality citizens, that do a great job in the community, and I’m constantly evolving as a coach. And I’ve talked about it several times here today, that I think the best thing I’ve done is allow coaches to do their job. Take a step back and say, you know what, maybe it’s not better that I sit in this meeting and tell somebody what I think they should do. It’s probably better that I let them do it and just oversee it and spend more time with the players so that I know Kamari Lassiter’s why, I know Brock Bowers’ why, I know Sedrick’s why. I can probably get more out of them by spending more time with them as players.”

Q: You talked a lot about complacency after winning back-to-back national championships. You obviously did the same thing at Alabama as defensive coordinator in 2012 and 2013. What lessons are you maybe taking from that part of your career and maybe what lessons are you taking from Saban in battling that complacency?

Smart: I can’t even remember that far back. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t remember that next season or anything that carried over from that season because you’re not thinking about the last season. I think sometimes as media you guys want to make it about, well, what are you going to learn, how are you going to combat this. All we’re thinking about is the next 24 hours. Like how can we get better in the next 24 hours. I’m not sitting here thinking of some motivating factor. People are like, what are you going to tell your team this year? You going to tell them people are going to say you’re going to be No. I’ve never said that anybody thought our team was going to be 7-5. We expect to be good at University of Georgia. We want sustained success. So we have to do that by winning every day. That’s not going to change whether we win it or not this year.

Q: You touched on the tragedy obviously that hit your program there, but you’ve had a number of traffic-related incidents since then. Are you disappointed that your players don’t seem to have gotten a message from that?

Smart: “I’m disappointed anytime we have traffic incidents. It’s very evident when you look at it, we’ve had traffic citations and incidents throughout the history of being at the University of Georgia. We actually don’t have more now than we’ve had in the past. What concerns me most is the safety of our players, and when you drive at high speeds it’s unsafe. We don’t want that to happen. We’re going to do all we can to take that out and make sure that’s eradicated. But I’m also smart enough to understand and know that 18- to 20-year olds is when this happens. It’s when it happened to me as a student-athlete. That’s when speeding happens. What we want to do is take that out and make it safe and not have high speeds. As long as they don’t get a speeding ticket, it should not be a super speeder.”

Q: You mentioned retention was the key to y’all’s success. What’s the secret there for you? How are you getting everyone to stay at Georgia with you?

Smart: “Well, everybody doesn’t stay at Georgia. We have all kinds of analysts and turnover in other spots, but making sure people enjoy their work environment. Like I want to come to work each day. A lot of the motivation to come to work and enjoy it is that you enjoy your time with your family. I’m always trying to find an innovative way, and I’ve had people outsource this, like come in and tell me how we can use our time more efficiently, and therefore our coaches get to be with their families and enjoy their families, so that when they are here they’re more passionate about their work and they want to stay. The college calendar, the coaching calendar, it’s one of the toughest things out there. Go ask an NFL coach. They’ll tell you. They’ll laugh and say, it’s crazy what you guys do. Well, I want to make it enjoyable for our coaches so that they feel good and they want to stay and they can bring their family to every event we have and let their kids run around and enjoy it. That’s important to me because I want my kids around, as well. The retention part is letting them do their job and making their job more enjoyable.”

Q: The Classic City Collective is one of seven collectives that plans to introduce a revenue sharing model. What are your thoughts on potential revenue sharing in the future?

Smart: “I’m not an expert on revenue sharing. I do know that our class at City Collective has been on the cutting edge of sharing information, trying to get best practices, trying to find a better way. I’ve been a big proponent of like why can’t — just like we talk across different programs to figure out the best way to run a defense or do an offensive play or study, let’s figure out the best practices of this so we can get some uniformity among them and try to grow it that way. That may not answer your question because I’m not an expert on revenue sharing or the way it would be set up.”

Q: You were talking about the retention rate. That 85 percent of those COVID babies sticking around, how hard is that in any given recruiting cycle to get that kind of hit rate? 

Smart: “It’s only that hard if you don’t recruit the right people. I’m proud of the fact that 17 of 20 guys are still in our organization from a COVID year in which we didn’t get to host an official visit. They didn’t get to go and do unofficial visits, and we’ve retained those guys because we’ve invested in them as freshmen. We’ve invested in them as sophomores. They’ve seen kind of return on investment for older players that stuck around. They watched a Quay Walker not start sophomore year but start his junior year, and then go a first-round pick his senior year. So they’ve seen a lot of evidence of the success, but they’ve also seen the buy-in of the leadership. I challenge anybody to dig up that COVID class, and that’s been a really good — and you know what we evaluated that class on? Love of the game and being selfless. Like that’s not hard. It’s hard to find, but it’s not hard to evaluate.”

Q: In the wake of the hazing reports out of Northwestern, do you or have you addressed the of hazing with your team, or do you — how do you handle maybe the idea of team bonding within your locker room?

Smart: “Yeah, that’s in our checklist. I think every coach would say at the beginning of the year you have a certain checklist you go through, and what’s happened uniquely is that most of your roster is turning over in January. So a couple years ago when we had 18 or 19 mid-years we began doing an August session of this is our new team, these are our new players, these are our team rules, and here’s the policies we go by. And then we have to do in January now; whereas in the past 10 years ago, eight years ago we never did this in January, but our team is turning over in January, so we do twice a year. We do education, we go through, and I lead that session because it’s important to me that they hear it from me, and our entire staff is in there and our entire players are in there. That’s one of the things we talk about each other, not so much hazing as it is welcoming the freshmen. I remember being a freshman and having to carry people’s trays and getting your head shaved when I was a freshman back in 1994. I just thought that was so dramatic. But now those freshmen, the guys we sign, they have to play. So when you create this separation of they have to do this and they have to do that, they’re not ready to play. They’re like a different team. So we do more of a brotherhood. Take this guy in. He’s at your position. Can you go out and teach him and walk him through, embrace those guys and make sure they understand that hazing will not be tolerated, and if it is, they need to let us know.”

Q: I wanted to ask about recruiting. How much have you seen recruiting change throughout your tenure as a head coach, and what needs to improve, if anything, in terms of recruiting?

Smart: “When you say what needs to improve in terms of recruiting, I don’t — recruiting has always been recruiting. It’s changed because the rules and parameters have changed. We moved up a signing date, moved it to December, which then made us all do official visits in June. I’ve seen this whole transformation from a recruit in 1994 that went on an official visit in late January to you would never even bring a guy in on a visit in January because they are almost all already enrolled. The cycle has flipped in terms of that. But when you talk about improving recruiting, I think so much used to be built on your facility and how can you show them how you can develop them, the education, what’s your major going to be. Like what do you want to do, life after football. So much has now become toward directed toward NIL, and I think that’s some of Commissioner Sankey’s frustration of trying to make that at least somewhat uniform so that we’re not operating under different rules state to state”

Q: You guys have run as many multiple tight end sets as anyone over the last couple years with Darnell Washington moving on is that something that you guys will continue because it’s in your philosophy, or with the personnel changes, do you think we will see less of those multiple tight end sets?

Smart: “Very simple answer to that question: We’re going to play the 11 best players that give us the opportunity to be successful. If that’s seven wide outs, if that’s two running backs, if that’s four running backs or two tight ends or 13 personnel, we can go through all the numbers. Every offensive coach will tell you and every head coach will tell you we’re going to get the best 11 players on the field. Last year Darnell Washington and Brock Bowers were two of our best football players. That is probably yet to be determined this season.”

Q: Earlier you alluded to being the only program to win consecutive national titles in the College Football Playoff era. Since 1936 at the Division I level, no team has won three straight since Minnesota in 1936; 12 teams have attempted to duplicate that but have come up short, including one you were part of in 2013 with Alabama. If Georgia is indeed the last team standing this year, what would that mean and represent for you personally and also for the Georgia program?

Smart: It would be a lot of hard work that had been acknowledged. I think we’re a long way from that, so to make that assumption or that theory relevant, we would have to get to that point in time. But I can assure you if we get to that point, I’m going to be worrying about the next day’s work more than I am the achievement.

Q: I was curious if you talked to your team about history, if you’re a history major in college football and talk about trying to do something that hasn’t been done since the 1930s and the relevance of all that.

Smart: “We have not addressed that with them. We’ve certainly looked at some three-peat scenarios of teams like the Bulls and different sports teams that they might actually know about. No offense to the Minnesota 1935 team, but I don’t know if it’s going to resonate with my audience. We’re going to try to — and I don’t care about the three-peat, the two-peat or the one-peat. I care about complacency. If the focus is on that and the outcomes, I think the rest will take care of itself in terms of allowing our guys to focus on being the best they can be.”

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