Skip to main content
Join

Kirby Smart Quotes on Leadership and Success to Motivate You

On3 imageby:Dan Morrison•04/21/22•

dan_morrison96

On3 image

For years, Kirby Smart existed in the shadow of his mentor, Nick Saban. Smart coached under Saban, as his defensive coordinator, from 2008 to 2015. Before that, he had even been on Saban’s staffs at LSU and with the Miami Dolphins. In many ways, Kirby Smart has modeled his program after Nick Saban and Alabama. They recruit the same players, invest similarly, and look to be physically dominant. Still, slower to adjust on offense, it felt like Smart might never beat his mentor, especially after a brutal loss in the 2021 SEC Championship Game. Then, the two met in the 2021-22 College Football Playoff and Georgia won convincingly. Kirby Smart became a national championship-winning head coach.

Kirby Smart still has a long career ahead of him. Most people expect him to continue dominating the sport. His passion for the game is real and there is plenty of insight and inspiration to be found in his quotes.

10 Best Quotes From Kirby Smart

  1. “At the end of the day, it boils down to a lot more than how the players play, not what defense or offense we call.”
  2. “When you talk about the SEC, you never get a chance to rest.”
  3. “At the end of the day, if you’re not beating the teams on the road recruiting that you have to beat on the field, then you’re probably not going to win many championships.”
  4. “How do you play well? You practice well. You prepare well.”
  5. “It’s hard to say that it gets any better to be at your alma mater and run a major college football program.”
  6. “I’ve got recruits that will text and call and do everything in the middle of the night. And I’m thinking, ‘I’m with my family.’ But you’ve got to dedicate time to that, or you can’t do it.”
  7. “Change is uncomfortable.”
  8. “What you have success with, you feel comfortable with, you always rely on that a little bit.”
  9. “I always felt like, one of the niches is if you can recruit the SEC, you can be a head coach in the SEC.”
  10. “Every day I pull into that parking spot that says ‘Head Football Coach,’ I get out of my car and pinch myself sometimes, just to make sure it’s real, sort of like, ‘Is this really happening?'”

Inspirational Quotes From Smart

  • “Coach Saban’s a great coach; he does it his way, and I have to do it my way. I have to cut my own cloth.”
  • “It’s very important that we don’t make the same mistakes twice. That’s a big part of improvement.”
  • “To be honest, it makes you a lot better coach when your boss is in the meeting room. You’re a lot more driven every day.”

Leadership Quotes From Kirby Smart

  • “I’ve seen Coach Saban over the years have to make a lot of tough decisions, and there’s not one decision he doesn’t make that he doesn’t bounce ideas off the staff. To me, that’s invaluable.”
  • “Every college coach I talk to won’t say it on record, but everyone’s thinking, ‘Should I go to the league?’ Because you don’t have the same requirements. It’s different. The hours are different.”
  • “I think it’s what’s best for that kid. Are you going to teach that kid a lesson for 10 years down the road by suspending him a game?”

Funny Quotes From Smart

  • “It never stops. It’s 365 recruiting. That cell phone you’ve got, these smartphones are the death of college coaching.”
  • “When your mom and dad read the paper, they like to know their sons are on the roster.”
  • “I don’t believe in the coach-in-waiting thing. I don’t think that works.”

Team Attitude Quotes From Kirby Smart

  • “I don’t recruit against Nick Saban. I recruit for the University of Georgia.”
  • “There’s a lot of people who think in order to be a good head coach, you’ve got to be a head coach at a smaller school.”
  • “It’s always a danger when you’ve got a great quarterback that throws the ball well, that scrambles well. You may push him into his asset. You may force him to do what he does best. So you’ve got to be able to throw curveballs and stop the pass as much as stop the run.”

Success Quotes From Smart

  • “What you have success with, you feel comfortable with, you always rely on that a little bit.”
  • “Every young man that we want to bring here to the University of Georgia, we want them to graduate from this place.”
  • “We’ve got to recruit at the same level of the people who are winning titles and playing for titles, and to do that, we’ve got to have great facilities.”
  • “Let’s be honest. Georgia, if you get the best players in this state, you should be winning championships.”
  • “You’ve got to be diversified enough. That’s the truth in the SEC and in college football.”