Kirby Smart recounts meeting Nick Saban, impact on his career

There aren’t many coaches that know Nick Saban better than Kirby Smart, and after his announced retirement on Wednesday, Smart shared his respect for the legend during an appearance on 92.9 The Game Thursday morning.

“He had a huge impact on my career,” Smart said. “The first time I met him I think was over in Mobile. I was at FSU as a graduate assistant and met him for an interview around the Senior Bowl time, met him at an FBO, one of those private airports. He was coming in and out, I got there about an hour before he did to make sure I was there on time. We had a nice, good interview. Coach Muschamp was there. It was unique. Probably wasn’t as intimidated back then as I should have been. It was right after he won the first national title. Lot of respect for him as a coach, as a person and a man. What he and Miss Terry have meant to the game of football, to Tuscaloosa, they’ve been incredible. He’s put a lot of coaches through his coaching factory. He’s really good at what he does, and from what I hear he was still working and coaching up right until the last minute over there. Lot of respect for him. He means a lot to my career.”

“Yeah and no. Little shocked when it came about, but it’s one of those things that’s inevitable for all of us,” he continued. “We’ll all walk away, and sometimes you walk away on your own terms and sometimes you don’t. I thought it was pretty cool he got to walk away on his own terms.”

Smart and Saban first linked in 2004 at LSU with Smart coaching defensive backs under Saban’s watch. After a year at his alma mater in 2005, Smart rejoined the Saban staff in 2006, Saban’s second in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins.

Then came the years together at Alabama. When Saban made the move back to the collegiate level in 2007, so too did Smart. Acting as an assistant head coach and defensive backs coach before being promoted to defensive coordinator, the two teams up for nine seasons in Tuscaloosa, winning four National Championships and leading some of the sport’s top defenses together.

“When I hired Kirby, he was really, really young. He was a position coach and did a great job as a position coach. We elevated him to be the coordinator. I kind of knew that he had great leadership qualities. That’s why we made him coordinator. When he was a coordinator, he did a great job of managing that side of the ball. I knew he’d be an outstanding head coach someday,” Saban recalled of Smart prior to the 2023 SEC Championship Game between the two as head coaches. “It’s phenomenal what he’s been able to accomplish at Georgia. I mean, to win as many games in a row, win a couple championships, have another chance to do it again a third time, I mean, that’s phenomenal. It’s phenomenal to win however many games – what is it, 29, I don’t even know for sure – but how many games they’ve won in a row… We won 19 games in a row here twice. I know how hard that was. It’s hard to sustain. So he’s done a phenomenal job of recruiting and developing players in the program. I think the result bears that out.”

Smart returned to his alma mater, this time as the head coach, in 2016. That set the stage for six meetings between his Georgia Bulldogs and Saban’s Crimson Tide. While five of the six meetings went the way of Alabama, Smart wasn’t alone in losing to his former boss – and he won a pretty big one.

With his win in the 2022 National Championship Game, Smart became just the second former assistant from the coaching tree to knock Saban off. Jimbo Fisher did so earlier in the 2021 season. Fisher and Smart were joined by Steve Sarkisian in 2023 with Texas’ victory in September at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Saban retires with a 28-3 record against former assistants.

“I can’t say enough about the tremendous respect I have for him, the job he’s done, how long he’s done it,” Smart said of Saban in December. “People don’t really understand how hard it is to be consistently really good, consistently great. He’s accomplished that at the highest level to me. Our conference is certainly really tough and hard. He’s done it for every year he’s been there besides maybe the first. He’s had really successful seasons. He’s a really good leader. He’s good at motivating. I think he’s kind of evolved with the times in the way he goes about things.”

“Never before has our sport or this level of college football required such multi-tasking. One minute you’re working on special teams, the next minute you’re chasing guys, dealing with the portal, dealing with transfers, NIL,” he added. “His (Saban) ability to compartmentalize and work at the task at hand was always incredible to me. It’s something that I try to do. I don’t know that I do it as well as he does when it comes to being able to focus on the task at hand and not get distracted on the little things.”

"You're a hell of a coach."

Kirby Smart to Nick Saban before the 2023 SEC Championship 🥹❤️ pic.twitter.com/sgnWkfDfq5

— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) January 10, 2024

Smart and Saban’s final meeting came in the SEC Championship Game this past December, and cameras caught a couple of moments between the two pregame. While Smart says it was cut up to meet the narrative SEC Network wanted to share, the actual conversation was even more meaningful than the already meaningful video.

“The moment, the clip I’ve seen is a brief little clip that they actually cut. They cut that up to how they want to. The actual footage is probably longer and more meaningful than that. They shape it how they want to and can make the narrative with what they want it to go as they cut in and out of that,” Smart said. “There’s a lot of respect both ways between he and I, and I’ve told him that. I make it a point to tell him how much I appreciate what he’s done for the game and for other coaches, not just me. He’s done a lot for the game of football. That pregame deal for me is just a matter of respect for what he’s done and how he goes about his business. Nobody works as hard as he does. He demands a lot of his staff, but he does it himself. I can respect that because I know how hard it is to do it at that level for a long time. He’s accomplished that. Those moments that are caught in there, you can tell it’s cut up to bits and pieces and there’s parts in there missing.”

Georgia will get its first crack at a Saban-less Alabama next September when the Bulldogs travel to take on the Crimson Tide on September 28th in Tuscaloosa. Who will be leading on the opposite sideline remains to be seen, but one thing that can be expected: the two teams will both still be among the nation’s best.