Even in new-look College Football world, Kirby Smart expectations stay the same

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia Football kicked off fall camp on Thursday and the Bulldogs did so with high expectations from their head coach. What does Kirby Smart want out of camp? The same thing he always has. College Football may be changing with 12 teams in the Playoff and new-look conferences, but Smart sees no reason to mess with the way things are run around UGA’s facility in Athens.

“A lot of people have talked about that and discussed it. I don’t really know what the camp has to do with that. The NFL has extended their preseason. They’ve added games to the season, but there’s not a lot of changes to the camp,” Smart said when asked whether he and his staff planned to do things differently given the possibility of playing as many as 17 games this season.

“The camp is the camp. Maybe something changes within the season to the season because as we go and have more information and play out the season, we may know the duration of the season. We don’t know that for certain right now,” he continued. “What we do know is that we’ve got a really tough opening opponent and we’ve got a really tough schedule. I don’t know that employing a back off pace, take it easy pace lends itself to success when you’re talking about facing the schedule we have to face.”

Smart’s Bulldogs kickoff against Clemson in a battle between featuring two programs claiming four of the last eight national championships. While things may have dropped off some from the Deshaun Watson-Trevor Lawrence days, the Tigers are still expected to be a top-15 team when the preseason rankings come out.

After the opener, it’s an SEC slate with road trips to Alabama, Texas and Ole Miss – all three of whom are expected to be in the preseason top-10. Tennessee, who Georgia plays at home, is tough, as are the likes of Auburn (home), Kentucky (road) and Florida (neutral). To cap things off is a Georgia Tech team making steps in the right direction.

So, given Georgia’s difficult schedule, Georgia’s camp isn’t going to be easy. As Smart said, he’s not sure backing off and taking it easy likely doesn’t lend itself to success. It also doesn’t help accomplish his goal of finding out what his team is made of.

“What’s our response going to be to the mental and physical adversity they face? I don’t know that in spring practice you can simulate that. We try to simulate it in the summer conditioning program, but it’s not the same as having all these pads on, helmets on, equipment on,” Smart said. “I can’t simulate the heat they’re going to have with that equipment on, so I don’t know how this team’s going to respond when stuff gets hard and stuff gets tough and guys start complaining to each other and they’re not running, and they’re not getting to the ball and practice is tiring, but that’s what camp is.”

“Our introduction last night was very deep into: why do you have a training camp? What is the purpose of the training camp? It’s to build the toughness within our team,” he continued. “We identify team leaders, and we have groups within our team that are for leadership … We can’t develop leadership at the top if we don’t start with kids when they enter, and that’s part of our skull session process. That’s part of our leadership training that we do when we take guys in the summer. We’ve definitely started that. That’s very important, and we think that’s a key to our success. That’s mindset over muscle.”

Georgia’s first practice came 30 days before the Bulldogs’ season opener on August 31st. They’ll practice 25 times in total including a couple of scrimmages to test the toughness and leadership Smart wants to see in a game setting.