The mentor vs. the protege: How Georgia’s Kirby Smart could change the Tide in the SEC, CFB
By John Buhler
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart will face his mentor in Alabama head coach Nick Saban in the 2017 national title. Can the Top Dawg change the Tide in the SEC?
While it may not have as much intrigue nationally, the Southeastern United States will be so fired up for the 2018 College Football Playoff National Championship game being played on Monday night. It will be dubbed “The Southern Super Bowl”, as the No. 3 Georgia Bulldogs will clash with the No. 4 Alabama Crimson Tide. They will play in Uncle Arthur Blank’s brand-new spaceship that is Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Basically, we’re about to see the biggest sporting event happen in Atlanta since the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. It’s been too cold in Atlanta these last few days, but things about to heat up on the Mercedes-Benz carpet on Monday night. But we do have to ask ourselves for a second if the 2017 National Championship is so ridiculously regional, why can’t we stop talking about it?
For the second time in seven years, we will have an All-SEC national championship. The first one was a rematch between Alabama and the LSU Tigers back in 2011 at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. LSU might have won the regular season meeting earlier that year, but it would be Alabama that came out on top for the crystal hardware in January 2012.
While Alabama and Georgia aren’t division rivals, this will be the first time these two neighboring states’ football powerhouses will meet on the gridiron since 2015. If we’re being totally honest here, the best part of this national title bout is that it is mentor versus protegé. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart cut his teeth as a college football coach under the tutelage of Alabama head coach Nick Saban.
Smart left Tuscaloosa for good in January 2016. He took over his alma mater’s football program beginning in the 2016 NCAA season, replacing the popular and successful Mark Richt. Smart had first worked under Saban as the safeties coach for the NFL’s Miami Dolphins in 2006. Saban would leave the NFL after the 2006 season. Smart would follow Saban to Alabama, where he would spend 2007 to 2015 as predominantly Saban’s defensive coordinator.
Saban has had several assistant coaches under him become successful college coaches including Jimbo Fisher, Will Muschamp and Lane Kiffin. However, it seems that Smart is his greatest disciple. Smart took so many of the great things he learned at Alabama and brought them back home to the Classic City.
In two years on the job, Smart has his Bulldogs playing in their first national championship since 1982. Georgia has not had this level of collegiate gridiron success since the peak Vince Dooley years when Herschel Walker was the university’s superstar running back. Richt won a ton of games in Athens during his 15 years on the job from 2001 to 2015, but not like this. So what makes what Smart is doing so special?
Well, he has essentially taken the great foundation that Richt set before him and turned Georgia into an SEC East clone of Saban’s Alabama program. Saban might be the best coach in the Power 5, but he’s 66 years old. It’s only a matter of time before Saban successfully transitions to television. He will absolutely crush his next college football endeavor as an analyst.
That being said, Smart is only 42 years old. It doesn’t seem like he’s going to leave his alma mater’s program anytime soon. With the amount of talent in-state and the love he has for the University of Georgia, could you blame him for staying as long as possible in Athens?
While Monday night’s game will be all about the outstanding players duking it out on the gridiron, the overriding narrative has to be if protegé Smart can beat his mentor Saban in not just their first meeting head-to-head, but for a national title nonetheless. What would that mean to the SEC and college football landscape if Smart’s Dawgs get past Saban’s Tide in Atlanta on Monday night?
Simply put, it might mean the end of an era in SEC football and the dawn of a new one. Smart has learned from the best recruiter in college football history in Saban. Saban has dominated on the recruiting trails since returning to the college game back in 2007. However, recruiting is a young man’s game and Smart is 22 years Saban’s junior.
Georgia has crushed the opposition in recruiting this season, as the Dawgs have the best 2018 class through the early signing period. Alabama may have a tad more football talent on the gridiron Monday night, but the 2017 Dawgs are the closest thing to a carbon copy of a Saban Alabama we’ve ever seen. Should their near facsimile prove to be capable of dismantling its creator, we could see changing tides in the SEC.
It wasn’t a lack of on-field talent or coaching that killed college football’s last two dynasties in Pete Carroll’s USC Trojans and Mack Brown’s Texas Longhorns. It was losing coordinator after coordinator, many of whom were excellent recruiters in their own right.
While Saban made an outstanding hire in replacing Smart in 2016 with Jeremy Pruitt at defensive coordinator, Pruitt too will be coaching in the SEC East in 2018. Pruitt took the long, not sought-after Tennessee Volunteers job. His team will play rivals Alabama and Georgia annually, as Pruitt tries to rebuild Rocky Top after a frustrating last decade in Knoxville.
Though the Crimson Tide are the lower seed to the Bulldogs, it is Alabama who will be laying more than a field goal in this neutral-site affair. Historically, Saban-led Alabama teams have no problem putting away offenses with non-mobile quarterbacks. True freshman signal-caller for the Dawgs Jake Fromm can move a little, but he has nowhere the wheels of Alabama true sophomore quarterback Jalen Hurts.
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Beating Alabama usually requires a dual-threat quarterback, a great defense and a few lucky breaks along the way. What a win for Georgia over Alabama would mean is that Georgia has taken the big first step to being the best team in the SEC, bar none. How the Dawgs stack up with other national powers like Clemson, Oklahoma and Ohio State remains to be seen. However, seeing the protegé beating the mentor signifies the beginning of the end of Saban Alabama more than anything.