Kirby Smart considers whether House settlement will impact transfer portal ‘spiral’

Kirby Smart gave an honest take about the impending House settlement and whether it will impact the transfer portal chaos in college sports. The Georgia head coach simply didn’t think it would have as big of an effect as some believe.

In fact, it could increase activity with more, and at least a standard, amount of money to go around. Now that the tube of toothpaste is open, it’s hard to put it back in at this point.

That’s the way Smart views it anyway. But in any event, Smart and Georgia are at the cream of the crop of college football, so they might not necessarily have the same issues even as other Power Four teams.

“I don’t know that the House settlement is going to have any effect on the flow of players because that’s not really what the House settlement is meant to do,” Smart said. “It could increase it if more teams have money. I think it’s hard to say what’s going on in our league, how that will impact things in the future. I can’t foresee that. I think it’s been spiraling and it’s continuing to spiral. So, I don’t know what reigns it in. 

“I don’t know that there’s anything anybody can do to reign it in. It is what it is. You have to manage your culture as good as you can. You have to manage the players you take as good as you can. And you’ve got to move on and play with the players that are there. I really don’t concern myself much with it. I just focus on the guys that are here and the guys that we can get to be here, and not worry about the ones that don’t want to be here.”

There have been more questions about the House settlement considering it’s right around the corner for the upcoming school year. Not only that, Smart and others noticed the Nico Iamaleava situation play out at Tennessee.

“There’s definitely more agents involved in the process this year than previous years, and it will continue to grow in terms of representation,” Smart said. “But the agents are just doing a job, just like I’m doing a job, just like the parents do a job. Their job is to protect their client, try to get the best deal or the best situation for their client they can. And I understand that. That is a business side of it. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think it’s only bad when we don’t have a system that has comps. 

“You don’t have a system that there’s, okay, this is what the comp is for kids. Sometimes their comp and what our comp is are completely different. And obviously both sides are trying to side things their way, and that makes it really challenging. You don’t have that challenge in the NFL because it’s public knowledge and you know what you’re working off of. Nobody really knows in college football what teams are working off of.”