Kirby Smart lists family time as most 'hurtful' sacrifice with football

Since becoming the head coach at Georgia, Kirby Smart has quickly become one of the best respected coaches and leaders in college football. At the same time, to get to that place, Smart has had to make sacrifices.

During an appearance on the College GameDay podcast, Smart explained that the most hurtful sacrifice he has had to make for football is losing time with his family.

“I would say time with my family, you know,” Kirby Smart said. “Realistically, it’s probably you have to go with quality over quantity, and I like being with my family. I like being with my kids.”

Kirby Smart is to Mary Beth Smart, who played basketball at Georgia. Together, they have three children.

The unfortunate reality for college coaches is that the schedule for coaches is constant and the expectations are so high that the majority of a coach’s time needs to be spent on work.

“You get a break, Rece, you get a chance to go and reset a week into spring break and maybe a week in the summer, but it’s not like maybe I wish it could be where I got more time with them and got to enjoy it. You have to go with quality over quantity and you probably have to make sacrifices to be the leader, and I think friendships sometimes with coaches,” Smart said.

“You’ve got guys on your staff and you’re going to be the leader of an organization and staff and you can still be friends with them, but you have to understand that you have to confront and demand if things aren’t getting done right. That’s a transition I had to make pretty quickly when I got here from Alabama.”

Kirby Smart on how Georgia will define success in 2023

After winning back-to-back national championships, it can be easy for those championships to become how a program defines success. However, that’s not how Kirby Smart is going to define success in 2023.

“Well, you say that, not me. I don’t think it’s national championship or bust, I don’t think any coach could ever say that that’s truly what it is. That’s not believable to me, it’s not probably sustainable,” Smart said.

“But what measures success is the same thing it did the last seven years, did we do the best possible job we could with this team? Did we get the most out of this team that we possibly could? That comes from the team buying into that, that comes from everybody in the organization buying into that, but you can’t quantify that in a number of wins and losses. I don’t think you can do that, you gotta say did I get the most out of this group.”