Mark Ingram: Kirby Smart lucky there wasn’t ‘ass-whooping’ after shoving Michael Van Buren

Mark Ingram called Georgia coach Kirby Smart a lucky man after his shove of Mississippi State quarterback Michael Van Buren.

Incidental or not, and it seemed to be incidental based on the reaction from Smart, Mississippi State and others, Ingram doesn’t play like that. And this is from a player who knows Smart personally.

Ingram played at Alabama and Smart was the DC for the Crimson Tide and there surely would’ve been words, or more, if Ingram was shoved in that situation.

“The SEC lucky there wasn’t an ass whooping,” Ingram said on The Triple Option. “I know Kirby perfectly. He was my defensive coordinator when I was at Alabama, and he knows if he would have touched any one of us alphas like that, then he would have been squared up on. If he would have tried to push Rolando McClain, Courtney Upshaw, them cats like that. Me, like Julio Jones, like I would have been trying to get at Kirby. 

“I would have been trying to get at Kirby. Now it was on (their) sideline, so I don’t know if I would have been able to get to him, but I damn sure would have tried. Kirby knows what would’ve went down. That’s somebody’s child man.”

During the second half of the 41-31 win for the ‘Dawgs on Saturday, Smart came down the sideline and shoved Van Buren as he was trying to say something to an official. Following the game, Smart clarified that it was actually DC Glenn Schumann that he was trying to get to. Beyond that, though, he said that he didn’t recall the moment.

“Coaches cannot make contact with an opposing player. This play should have resulted in enforcement of an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement. “As Kirby discussed in his press conference today, he has appropriately reached out to Mississippi State head coach Jeff Lebby and quarterback Michael Van Buren. I am confident the contact was not intentional and the clear expectation is this conduct will not happen again.”

Van Buren also said afterwards that he didn’t really remember it either as he was just trying to play.

Smart also issued an apology for it during his press conference today. With that, he further explained that it just happened in the moment of a defensive change with Schumann.

“I went back and watched it and didn’t even realize that I had run into him. But I reached out to (Jeff) Lebby that night and talked to him and he said the kid was great,” Smart said. “Then, yesterday, I talked to (Michael) and told him I had no intentions or ill will towards him at all.”