Last year, Kirby Smart became only the second assistant coach under Nick Saban to defeat him. Since Saban returned to college football in 2007, Smart may be the only coach to be able to legitimately claim to have owned the sport for so long as of Monday.
Saban persevered and his opponents lost steam every time someone seemed to be able to stop Alabama’s year-over-year supremacy. Without Trevor Lawrence, Dabo Swinney’s Clemson, which twice defeated Alabama in national championship games, hasn’t returned to the postseason. There was Urban Meyer’s Ohio State and Jimbo Fisher’s Florida State. There was Ed Orgeron’s LSU for a short period of time. every success story. None have been as relevant for so long as Saban’s Alabama.
Now? Since Saban’s time in 2011 and 2012, no one has been able to do what Smart has. He has won two consecutive national championships, the second of which he dominated TCU 65-7 on Monday night at SoFi Stadium. With a win in the Cotton Bowl, Alabama’s season was officially over on New Year’s Day, a game that has long been made inconsequential by the high bar Saban has set in Tuscaloosa.
Alabama will undoubtedly return. No one in their right mind expected the Tide to lose easily after Saban brought in the No. 2 recruiting class in the country last month. But at least as of Tuesday morning, Smart’s program is the gold standard in college football.
“Entitlement is the illness that seeps into your program. Not than an hour after arriving at the peak, Smart added, “I’ve seen it personally. “You can remain hungry if you can crush it with leadership. We also have a local proverb that goes, “We eat from the floor.” And you can be unique if you’re prepared to eat from the ground.
That may just as well be the old Saban speaking.
According to receiver Kearis Jackson, Smart “gets everything out of us.” We’re all students, and he’s going to take our scholarships.
This dominance in the national championship game resembled Saban’s 42-14 thrashing of Notre Dame in 2012, another annihilation that resulted in back-to-back championships.
In that one, Alabama solidified its position as the sport’s epicenter. In this game, Georgia took up the Crimson Tide’s mantle, and Saban was forced to watch as an ESPN commentator. But this was a piece of art from out of Saban’s book—right down to players referencing fictitious critics after the game.
Right tackle Warren McClendon described Smart’s influence as “really just instilling in us that we’re not going to be persecuted here at the University of Georgia.” “We’ll be the ones conducting the hunts. And every week, we’re going to attack our opponents as the aggressors.
That is the proper mentality to adopt while dealing with anybody at Smart’s Georgia. Of course, TCU under Sonny Dykes. Yes, even Alabama under Saban.
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