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After spending the last 10 years serving under arguably the greatest head coach in college football, Kirby Smart may have gotten the best apprenticeship possible for his first head coaching job over the last decade. However, that being said, Smart still enters the unknown in his first season at Athens and has been actively seeking advice on how to handle his head coaching responsibilities.
Former Georgia head coach Jim Donnan was one of the coaches willing to offer Smart some advice this offseason. Donnan of course was Georgia’s head coach from 1996-2000 and left Athens with a record of 40-19 before being replaced by Mark Richt.
“The one thing that I told him was that the biggest mistake that I made my first year was that I spent way too much time with the alumni clubs speaking and trying to promote the program rather than being with the players,” Donnan said according to Barrett Sallee of Bleacher Report. “I felt like I spent enough time with the players, but still, looking at the relationships the first year compared to the second year was night and day.”
Smart appears to have taken the advice to heart and has decided to speak at fewer offseason events compared to his predecessor Richt.
How Smart performs in the lead role is still to be determined but at the very least he’s been reaching out to those who know the job best and appears to be listening to what they have to say.
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
