Kirby Smart discusses the natural growth in size of athletes across college football, all sports

As spring football around the country has mostly come to a close, it’s the time of year where coaches and athletes alike have a chance to rest and catch their breath a little bit. For Georgia coach Kirby Smart, the topic of size of athletes was brought up in a recent radio appearance.

And Smart, speaking on 680 Live From Athens, opined on some of the changes in sports over the years.

Not just football, either.

“The size, I mean, athletes in general, it doesn’t matter what sport,” Smart said. “You look at (Brooks) Koepka and (Jon) Rahm. I mean those are two big men pounding on the golf ball and they hit it further and further.

“Well the same thing’s true with ours. The guys are bigger and bigger. The Jordan Davises, the (Sedrick) Van Prans, just the average amount of weight of linemen across the board is huge.”

Few have been a beneficiary of that size as much as Smart. He has turned the Georgia program into two-time national champs over the last two seasons by beefing up in the trenches.

Georgia has had back-to-back defensive tackles taken as top-10 overall NFL Draft picks, while it has had 10 players in the trenches on either side of the ball drafted in the last two years.

But the increasing size of athletes isn’t limited to the trenches.

“It carries down to defensive backs,” Smart said. “When I came I was 175 and was probably average weight. Now if you’re not 190 it’s hard for you to survive back on the back end because you’re tackling bigger people.”

There’s still one aspect of college football that makes it truly unique in the sport, though.

Along with the massive jump in the size of athletes from high school to college, there’s also a major jump in the level of physicality. It’s one that doesn’t necessarily carry over directly to the NFL.

“It’s really different for college, because I talk to so many NFL guys here recently about our guys going to the draft and they talk about how little they get to hit and how they don’t get to practice and they can’t really develop a player,” Smart said. “They get what they get, and they get a finished product or they don’t. They can’t develop one because they don’t get to hit and they don’t get to practice due to the CBA.”

That’s not an issue in college.

Though two-a-days and various other practice methods have been done away with or tweaked over the years, college football players still get a full 15 spring practices and then 25 fall practices before the games begin.

And though the level of physicality allowed has been decreased as the size of athletes has grown and the dangers of heavy contact come to light, Smart says the one benefit college’s increased physicality provides is real development.

“In college we get to practice. We get more practices, we get to have physical toughness,” Smart said. “So if you’re going to make it to the NFL you have to pass through college in most circumstances and you have to have some physical toughness to be able to get through college football because there is physicality there.”