Kirby Smart named finalist for Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart was named a finalist for the Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year Award on Tuesday, one of eight coaches to earn the designation. Smart is joined by TCU’s Sonny Dykes, Duke’s Mike Elko, Tulane’s Willie Fritz, Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, USC’s Lincoln Riley, Troy’s Jon Sumrall and UTSA’s Jeff Traylor.
Smart is a third-time finalist in his seventh season at the helm for the Bulldogs, making the cut for a second straight season. Georgia is 13-0 for the first time in program history and earned the top-seed in the College Football Playoffs on Sunday. There the Bulldogs will take on Ohio State on December 31st in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in Atlanta.
Accolades of Smart’s season include a fifth SEC Championship Game appearance – winning this one 50-30 over LSU to claim the conference crown – and his team’s ranking in the top-11 for both scoring offense (11th, 39.2 points per game) and scoring defense (2nd, 12.8 points per game). Quarterback Stetson Bennett is a finalist for the Heisman Trophy among a cast of characters on offense that are incredibly talented – most notably tight end Brock Bowers, a finalist for the John Mackey Award – while on the defensive side of the football defensive lineman Jalen Carter, linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson and safety Christopher Smith all earned some sort of award finalist status.
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I’m excited. What a great program, great job Ryan (Day) has done there. They’ve got really good players because we recruited a lot of the same kids. It’ll be a premier matchup which our guys love,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said of his initial reactions to making the Playoff and taking on Ohio State during the ESPN Selection Show. “It’s not about the Big Ten and SEC, it’s about football. It boils down to the line of scrimmage, it boils down to turnovers, explosive plays, it’s not really about the two conferences in those games. You may make it about that but really it’s about who plays better because I also coached at Alabama when Ohio State absolutely destroyed us one semifinal game. They played better. They were more explosive and they didn’t have turnovers and we did at Alabama. It really boils down to how you play not who you play.”
“I’d like to give my guys a little to time to recover, relax, get in shape, worry about final exams. There’s so many things going on,” he added, speaking about the preparation process. “We’ve got official visits next weekend and you see a team that didn’t play in its conference championship, they had a week off. They’re going to be fresh and ready to go and ready to bounce back and start practicing. We have to be smart about how we practice our guys but also understand it’s going to be a physical game because Ohio State’s a very physical team.”
