Kirby Smart addresses repeated reckless driving among Georgia players, calls it a 'tough situation to manage'

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart has a dangerous driving problem on his hands. Not his driving, but that of his football players, who have been cited numerous times in recent months for speeding, reckless driving, DUI and other various crimes.

The most high-profile incident involved No. 10 overall draft pick Jalen Carter street racing a teammate and recruiting staffer — Devin Willock and Chandler LeCroy — on Jan. 15, resulting in a fatal crash that killed Willock and LeCroy. This week, Smart admitted that whatever he and athletic director Josh Brooks have been telling the players, it has not been “effective enough,” according to the Athens Banner-Herald.

“I don’t know if we can ever eradicate speeding, I don’t know if that’s possible, but I’m going to damn sure try because I don’t think that what we’re doing right now has been effective enough,” Smart said on Tuesday at a press conference to address this specific issue.

The press conference comes about a week before Smart and several Georgia players head to SEC Media Days and a fresh wave of media scrutiny.

So far, the punishments for the football players — aside from their legal woes — have been kept in-house and not risen above players being suspended. No players, apparently, have been kicked off the team to date for any sort of dangerous driving.

Smart called it a “tough situation to manage.”

“It’s one of the things we want to manage but it’s a tough situation to manage when you have 18 to 22 year old men and a lot of them are driving for the first time. …We continue to work on that. I don’t have the exact answer. I wish I did,” Smart said.

Brooks, the Georgia AD, said that speeding and dangerous driving by football players “is a problem we continue to address.”

Coaches and staffers apparently texted and called players, urging them to be safe when returning to campus after the July 4 holiday break.

That didn’t stop freshman linebacker Samuel M’Pemba from being popped for going 88 in a 55 MPH zone while driving back to campus on July 5.

“We got issues with traffic citations and speeding issues that we have to improve upon. …It’s been a real tough offseason, if you want to know the truth, because the way it kicked off and the way it started,” Smart said.

He added that they’re trying “to correct and we have to make tough decisions on case by case basis, what that is to try make that right.”