Pete Thamel reveals how Kirby Smart is pushing back against Georgia's alleged speeding problems

At SEC Media Days, one of the first questions Georgia head coach Kirby Smart received regarded his team’s recent tragedies and violations inside of automobiles. His answer, which you can read further below, suggested that UGA had no more traffic incidents this year than any other years, but did note that super speeding is what really has put players in danger, especially this offseason.

After Smart’s time at the podium on Tuesday, college football insider Pete Thamel joined the SEC Network crew to break down the Georgia coach’s comments on a pretty important off-the-field issue within the program.

“Yeah so Kirby addressed it at the podium, he came into our ESPN.com room. It’s interesting that Kirby Smart was not necessarily conciliatory and pushing forward, but he pushed back a little bit,” said Pete Thamel of Smart’s answer, explaining that he feels Smart actually doesn’t feel the program has a major problem here.

“And he did that last week with some local media in Atlanta, and he differentiates speeding from super speeding, and he didn’t think his program had a speeding problem and literally dove into the statistics of how many speeding tickets they’ve gotten since 2006 and moving forward and everything. So it was an interesting tact in the wake of a strategy of Kirby Smart to push back at some of the criticism and really say, ‘guys getting speeding tickets necessarily isn’t the issue. It’s when it’s street racing and super speeding that it is a problem.”

For the entire original answer from Smart, keep on reading.

Kirby Smart answers on series of vehicle-related incidents within program

“I’m disappointed anytime we have traffic incidents,” Smart said at SEC Media Days. “You know, it’s very evident. When you look at it, we’ve had traffic citations and incidents throughout the history of being at the University of Georgia. And we actually don’t have more now than we’ve had in the past. So what concerns me most is the safety of our players. Alright? 

“And when you drive at high speeds, it’s unsafe, and we don’t want that to happen. We’re going to do all we can to take that out. And make sure that’s eradicated.” 

Smart mentioned how it’s a more common problem among young kids and young adults.

“But I’m also smart to understand and know that 18 to 20 year olds is when this happens,” Smart said. “It happened to me as a student athlete, that’s when speeding happens. What we want to do is take that out and make it safe and not have high speeds. If someone’s gonna get a speeding ticket, it should not be a super speeder.”