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Georgia Football: Kirby Smart trying to ‘change culture’ at UGA.

By Alistair Penny

ATHENS, GA - SEPTEMBER 10: Georgia football head Coach Kirby Smart explains a play during the game against the Nicholls Colonels at Sanford Stadium on September 10, 2016 in Athens, Georgia. (Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)
ATHENS, GA - SEPTEMBER 10: Georgia football head Coach Kirby Smart explains a play during the game against the Nicholls Colonels at Sanford Stadium on September 10, 2016 in Athens, Georgia. (Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images) /
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Georgia Football Head Coach Kirby Smart gave an interview to Jeff Schultz at the AJC this week. I was particularly interested about his focus on culture.

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Kirby Smart goes into his second season as Georgia Football Head Coach next weekend. A lot seems to have happened since he took the job in December 2015. His first season was a bit of a disappointment when the team went 8-5 but expectations are high for 2017. He did an interview with AJC sports columnist Jeff Schultz this past week. It’s certainly worth checking out for any hardcore dawg fan. It’s always interesting to see what makes a head football coach tick.

There were a few answers that really stood out for me. First among them were Smarts understanding that he is still learning on the job. He knows that he’s not going to get everything right straight away and that this is going to be a process. The one answer that stood out most to me however was that he’s still very focused on culture:

"‘I don’t know that you can change the culture in one year. Within the program, the people and players understand that can be a concern. There’s entitlement with reason and there’s entitlement without reason. At Alabama you went through entitlement without reason early on, and then there was entitlement with reason. Either is extremely dangerous. Here, my big thing is, you better do something first. That’s all of us, not just the players.’"

To me, this is something that all fans need to keep in mind as we go into the season, Yes, this team has some talented seniors unlike last year and a very exciting freshman group. However, this is only Smart’s second year and team culture takes a while to build. It’s important UGA  gets better, but a lot of the change that Smart wants to see will take time. It will take multiple recruiting classes and years of consistent messaging.

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That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still hope to see Georgia win the SEC East this year, but if they do end up losing one or two games they shouldn’t, we probably shouldn’t be getting out pitchforks out quite yet.

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