It had to happen this time because, if it didn’t, the questions wouldn’t have included “When will he?” They would have been: “Will he ever? Can he ever?” And worse.
Smart could have shaken hands with any opposing coach Monday night and been ecstatic about the result: a 33-18 victory that resulted in the first national championship for his alma mater, Georgia, in more than four decades. But the hand he shook belonged to Alabama Coach Nick Saban, which is essentially shaking the hand of college football’s pope. Smart’s record against his former boss colored not just Monday night but the month between these matchups, the 11 days since the rematch was solidified, the perceived future of both programs. He was 0-4.
When will he? Will he ever?
Now he has, Georgia’s first title since Herschel Walker and Vince Dooley in the 1980 season.
“I hope it doesn’t take that long again,” Smart said.
Now that it has happened, even once, and happened against Alabama, the pertinent question might be this: Was that a changing of the guard? That seems like heresy because no one has been more resolute and consistent than Saban and the Crimson Tide, which played for the national title for the sixth time in seven years. Predicting Alabama’s demise is folly.
But this was a significant moment because the dragon had finally been slain. It’s the result that was needed to validate what was happening in Athens: Smart had built a top-five powerhouse, a recruiting juggernaut, that had to be acknowledged — even by the notoriously reticent Saban.
“Really kind of an honor to have the opportunity to play against what we feel is one of the most elite programs in the country,” Saban said the day before the game, “and probably, just looking at the future, will be for some time in the future as well.”
On ESPN after the game, Saban added this: “I’m proud of Kirby. I’m proud of the program that he’s built. He’s done an outstanding job with this team. They’ve probably been the most consistent team all year long.”
That’s through gritted teeth, with the need to be polite on national television. But there’s truth to it, too. The Bulldogs finished 14-1, with the lone blip coming against Alabama in the SEC championship game. Sorry: In Athens, that wasn’t a “blip.” It was a stain and the extension of a trend.
The history here mattered, and if this Georgia team lost to this Alabama team for the second time in six weeks, well, Smart couldn’t have walked into many bars from Columbus in the west to Augusta in the east and been offered as much as a Happy Hour draft. Here’s why: Every single one of those patrons would know Smart had faced Saban and Alabama four times as Georgia’s coach. Four times, the Bulldogs led. Four times, the Bulldogs lost.
So here was halftime, in a gritty slugfest: Alabama 9, Georgia 6.
“We were down to a really good team,” Smart said on ESPN. “A team that had left scars. Not scars from a couple weeks ago.”
Deeper than that. A couple of weeks ago would be the SEC championship game, back on Dec. 4 — that lone blip in 2021. On that day, a Georgia team that hadn’t allowed as many as 20 points all season — that allowed single-digit points in eight games and pitched three shutouts — somehow gave up 41 to Alabama.
To Alabama. Saban, where Smart is concerned, was nothing short of a specter. Smart first came to work for college football’s most luminous figure before he was college football’s most luminous figure — back in 2004, when Saban was still at LSU, a year after he led the Tigers to the national title. In 2005, Saban bolted Baton Rouge for the Miami Dolphins, and a year later he hired Smart to be his safeties coach. When Saban returned to college coaching in Tuscaloosa, he brought Smart with him to be his assistant head coach and defensive backs coach — a position special to Saban because it’s what he played and what he most closely oversees. A year after that, Saban promoted Smart to defensive coordinator.
That run lasted eight years — an eternity under Saban, who cranks through coordinators as if they’re paper towels. “I was with Nick for a long time,” Smart said. Common traits can breed contempt. These two are going after the same players. They’re trying to build the same program. They’re striving toward the same goals.
And before Monday, there was no concrete, on-the-scoreboard evidence that Smart could beat Saban. The SEC title game — in which Smart’s defense was shredded by Heisman Trophy-winning Alabama quarterback Bryce Young — was the latest example. But there was also the CFP title game that followed the 2017 season, a game Georgia led by a field goal in overtime, forced second and 26 — and allowed a 41-yard pass from Tua Tagovailoa to a freshman wide receiver named DeVonta Smith that lost the national title.
“That one’s going to be with me a long time,” Smart said on the field early Tuesday morning. “This one’s going to be with me a lot longer.”
Because the Bulldogs won, because the outcome was different, an entire legion of red-and-black fans will agree with him. But it had to happen Monday because this was Smart’s most talented team, featuring a defense filled with future NFL terrors — led by linebacker Nakobe Dean and defensive lineman Jordan Davis but supported by the sheer disruption of safety Lewis Cine. That group, against an Alabama offense that was without wide receiver John Metchie III to start the game and Jameson Williams midway through the first half? Headed into the game, those two had combined for 171 catches; the rest of the Alabama roster had combined for 174. If Smart lost to this Alabama team, as compromised as it was …
He didn’t. That mattered Monday night. It matters going forward. Saban is 70, and while his exit at Alabama isn’t front-of-mind, he’s much closer to the end of his tenure than he is the beginning. Smart is 46 and could lead his alma mater for another quarter of a century.
To say Georgia has passed Alabama because of the way one fourth quarter played out on a Monday night in Indianapolis would be foolish. But this much is certain: That trajectory would not be possible if Smart, at some point, hadn’t beaten Saban. It’s no longer “Will he ever?” or “Can he ever?” He did. And college football feels different because of it.
