The first Georgia-Florida football showdown to take place in Atlanta and to be staged indoors was a dud from a drama standpoint Saturday as the Bulldogs feasted on four Florida turnovers and eight Gators penalties during a 27-8 snoozer.
In his postgame news conference, however, Georgia coach Kirby Smart delivered a doozy of a response when asked about the carnage taking place this season in the Southeastern Conference.
“It does seem different,” Smart said. “I’ve asked several coaches about it, and we all speculate. Everybody is practicing less, but everybody is getting injured more, and it doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t add up. People are going to have to make a choice on how they want to practice. Do you want to practice, or do you want to save everybody?
“I think about the teams we had in 2021 and 2022 and how physical they were and how they practiced, and we can’t even get close to that now. They were definitely hungrier, because there was a motivation to make it. A lot of these guys are making more than I made until I was 40. It’s just a different day and age.”
This has been written here before, but when Alabama’s Nick Saban decided to retire after the 2023 season as NIL money and the NCAA transfer portal were strengthening their respective grips on college football more and more, it left Smart as the sport’s most prominent face to deal with those issues and others, such as revenue sharing and an expanding postseason.