Kirby Smart's wife details how Georgia head coach nearly took another SEC job in 2015

The first lady of Georgia Bulldogs football and a former lady Bulldog in her own right, Mary Beth Smart told an intriguing story on what could have been for the Smart family. While being a guest on an Athens local radio show, Smart explained just how close her husband was to taking his talents to South Carolina.

“We were really close to taking South Carolina at the time,” Mary Beth Smart said on a recent interview with 960 the Ref in Athens. “… The AD [Ray Tanner] and one of the athletic administration guys were in the kitchen meeting with us that morning Coach [Mark] Richt was fired. It was leading down that road. The way the timing fell for him was really special.”

As Mary Beth Smart says in the interview, the Georgia Bulldogs head coaching opportunity was “a dream come true” for both of them, since it’s their alma mater.

Smart got to do what many dream of doing and go back and coach the program he played for. He played a total of four years for the Bulldogs from 1995 to 1998. And when he left for the NFL in 1999, he was a four-year letterman at defensive back. Smart was also a first-team All-SEC selection as a senior. He finished with 13 interceptions, which rank fourth all-time at Georgia and played alongside Pro Football Hall of Fame cornerback Champ Bailey.

Smart on the possibilities of an undefeated season

Going undefeated in the SEC is no easy feat. Georgia did exactly that — and Kirby Smart talked about what it means to run the table.

The Bulldogs are 10-0 overall and went a perfect 8-0 in conference action. They have two non-conference games left before a conference title game for the ages, but Smart was asked what it means to go undefeated in league play, but he’s not satisfied with just that.

“That’s where we’ve gotten,” Smart told reporters after beating Tennessee. “It makes no guarantee for what’s going to happen in the future. We’ve got a lot of guys that we’ve got to try to get better and improve. We’ve got to tackle better, a lot of things we can work on to get better. You know what I love? The men in that locker room beside me. They all know that.

“Nobody thinks they’ve arrived. [We have] things we can work on to get better at and they’ll continue to do it. But tonight? They went through a tough gauntlet in our league and played well.”

Georgia won its eighth game in true Bulldogs fashion. They went into Neyland Stadium and defeated Tennessee 41-17 to secure a perfect regular-season conference record. With two games left — Charleston Southern and Georgia Tech — Georgia has a good chance to enter Atlanta undefeated for the SEC championship on Dec. 4.