Ever since Nick Saban retired from Alabama it has been Kirby Smart that has had the claim to the college football throne. His two National Championships along with his utter dominance of the SEC over the last few years has led him to be widely considered the No. 1 head coach in the entire sport.
This offseason however there have been many analysts who have slid Smart down their rankings in favor of Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti.
CFB analyst’s latest Kirby Smart claim has all of Georgia laughing
All offseason college football analysts have been proclaiming that Cignetti is the nation's best coach now. That may seem like a strange thing to suggest since he is still such a new name on the coaching scene, but there are a lot of reasons for why people have named him the No. 1 coach in the sport now.
“What he’s done in two years in Bloomington is, simply put, the most remarkable turnaround in the sport’s history,” The Athletic’s Bruce Feldmen said via thespun.com. “He transformed the losingest program in college football history into an 11-2 Playoff team in Year 1 and a 16-0 national champion in Year 2 — and his team beat a bunch of blue bloods along the way. It’s a stretch to think any other coach could’ve done what the 64-year-old Cignetti has done.”
All of these points are great and show why Cignetti is one of the best head coaches in the country. It's these accomplishment that even led Indiana to make him one of the highest paid coaches in the country too.
But Smart has been around for much longer and winning at a high level before anyone even knew who Cignetti was, and that is the reason why he is still the No. 1 coach in the country.
“Smart has been remarkably consistent. After his 8-5 debut in 2016, he has not finished lower than No. 7 in the AP poll in the past nine years. Smart has won two national titles and is 37-3 in SEC play during the past five seasons. Smart won his second of back-to-back national titles in 2022, but that was in the “old” era of college football. Since then, his teams are an impressive 36-6, but they haven’t finished inside the top five the past two seasons. That’s relevant to Cignetti leapfrogging him,” said Feldman.
At the end of the day it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks. Georgia knows they have an elite coach who is capable of leading them to a championship every season. So even though others think Cignetti is better, Georgia can rest easy knowing how good they have it with Smart.
It still would be nice though to face Indiana and Cignetti soon, that way Georgia can have a chance to prove that Smart is in fact the better coach.