Kirby Smart issues apology for incident with Mississippi State QB
ATHENS, Ga. — A late-game moment between Georgia head coach Kirby Smart and Mississippi State quarterback Michael Van Buren has taken social media by storm since Saturday night. After a play ended on the UGA sideline, Smart was caught on camera making contact with the opposing signal caller. His arms extended in a shoving-like manner as he ripped his visor off in rage. Smart said postgame he didn’t recall making contact with Van Buren and remembers only trying to get to defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann. Monday, before getting into Georgia-Texas week talk, the ninth-year head coach shared how he handled issuing an apology afterwards.
“After you guys said that in the press conference, 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. “And then yesterday, I talked to Mike (Michael) and told him I had no intentions or ill will towards him at all.”
“If you’ve ever been on the sideline in a game, it’s pandemonium. It’s really pandemonium when you’re trying to change personnel and you only got three or four seconds to do it,” he added. “We were bad off in a bad personnel grouping against empty that we actually messed up the week before. And so I was trying to get to Schumann to get that changed. But I reached out to the kid, he was great. He’s a really good player, gonna be a good player in this league. And he played better as the game went on against us.”
Asked about the push after the game, neither Van Buren or Lebby had much to say.
“I’m not really sure what that was. Just trying to play my game,” Van Buren said. “I didn’t really see it, for real though.”
“I haven’t seen it,” Lebby added as he shook his head. “No response on that.”
Van Buren finished the game with 306 yards passing, three touchdowns and one interception. The freshman from Bowie, Maryland led the visiting Bulldogs in their effort to get back into the game, getting as close as 10 points late in the third quarter after trailing 34-10 earlier in the second half.
“I thought their quarterback gained confidence throughout the game,” Smart said of Van Buren. “He made some plays. Early, he struggled, and as the game went on, he made some throws that were good throws, and they beat us on them.”
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“He settled in there late in the first half and played really really well in the second half,” Lebby added from a Mississippi State perspective. “That’s without watching the tape, but early on, it’s a young kid in an unbelievable environment where we had an opportunity to do some things but didn’t hit on them. I’ve got to continue to coach him better to get him some success, but proud of him for getting himself out of that hole and answering the right way to be able to go play the way we need to play.”
Georgia, 5-1 (3-1 SEC) after the 41-31 win, takes on Texas at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin this Saturday. It’s a matchup between the No. 5 Bulldogs and top-ranked Longhorns with both SEC Championship Game and College Football Playoff implications.
Kickoff time from the Lone Star State is set for 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC. ESPN’s College GameDay will be in town to get the day underway, broadcasting live from the Texas campus beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET.
