Kirby Smart starts to see his own coaching tree explode with blooms
Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart has been at Georgia for six seasons, and so far, four of his assistants are now head coaches at Power 5 schools. His coaching tree has begun to bloom and in an elite way.
When assistant coaches leave for head coaching jobs, a program is doing something right. It shows that whatever Smart is implementing culture-wise is working and rubbing off the assistants.
Long gone are the staffs that stick around for years and years. Would it be nice if they did?
Yes, but college football is constantly seeing turnover, so it makes sense other schools poach off the best teams’ staffs.
Kirby Smart has begun to see his own assistant coaches bloom by getting their own head coaching jobs.
Since Smart took the job in 2016, he has had four assistants leave. Mel Tucker left for Colorado, but then quickly took the Michigan State job, and now he has one of the best contracts ever. Shane Beamer is now the head coach at South Carolina doing a great job.
Sam Pittman is absolutely crushing it at Arkansas as the Hogs are going to a bowl game for the first time in six years.
Now Dan Lanning is heading to the West Coast, and he will do a great job. The way he interacts and draws players in is something not every coach has. That ability is one of the many reasons he will make a great head coach, plus his insane amount of football knowledge.
Smart has been really strategic in his hires, and they’ve paid off by being extremely beneficial at Georgia and now going on to their next schools. Only time will tell if Lanning will follow in the rest of the assistants’ footsteps or not.
Georgia football is becoming a place for assistant coaches to get their start and prove they are worthy of head coaching spots, and that is never a bad thing to have