Kirby Smart discusses evolving with new rules while maintaining established structure

Kirby Smart and Georgia reached the mountaintop last season, winning the national championship for the first time in 40 years. Now, it’s all about staying there in the ever-changing college football landscape.

But Smart is ready to roll with the changes.

This week, Smart talked about what it takes to stay ahead of the curve as rule changes and shared some advice he receiver during his coaching career. That’s when he discussed his role with the NCAA rules committee — including a return to Indianapolis after the national title game.

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“If you don’t evolve with the game, it’ll pass you by,” Smart said on Crain and Co. this week. “I learned that from the best. You’ve got to be at the cutting edge, you’ve got to know what’s going on, you’ve got to remain relevant.

“I had the great fortune this year of being on a rules committee. … Not knowing that I would spend the national championship in Indianapolis, I got to go back to Indianapolis where they did the NCAA rules committee. I sat through two days of long, grueling meetings of things I never know you could even meet about and things you could even ponder about on rules changes.”

Kirby Smart: I want football to be safer

Smart not only shared some of the topics the rules committee talked about, but explained why they did so. He said safety is the No. 1 priority, and he has more than one personal reason to care about the safety of the game.

“The biggest part of about that is the safety,” Smart said. “People don’t understand, the targeting — a lot of people don’t like it. I hear people fuss and complain about college football and targeting and how they’re going to change this and that. At the end of the day, the purpose they set out to do, which is reduce concussions and reduce those violent striking blows, they’ve reduced those. The offset of that is probably some dislike by fans and some questionable decisions. The purpose is to make it a safer game.

“I’ve got a son that plays the game. I hope football goes on forever. I want it to be safer. So if that rule makes it safer, I think we have to listen to it and understand it. The rules of blocking below the waste, we’ve just changed. We’ve gone parallel with the NFL. They found, through their studies and their numbers … that it cut down on knee injuries. So if it works, let’s do it. I think you’re always, as a coach, trying to use those rules to keep you on the cutting edge of winning and trying to be at a competitive advantage. That’s what we try to do here.”