Kirby Smart Might Not Have Answers To Georgia's Off-Field Problems, But He's Learning To Multitask While He Figures It Out

NASHVILLE -- Kirby Smart walked onstage here at SEC Media Days like a rockstar would at any of his sold-out shows: full of energy. The Georgia head coach went on a 14-minute filibuster that mimicked Eli Drinkwitz, proclaiming that his program does not have a problem with authority.

Now, whether you choose to believe Smart or not is completely up to you, but their are two different situations at play here. What if Kirby Smart has a group of players that are a bit entitled, but will destroy each opponent on the field? There's two sides to every situation and Georgia football has its toes dipped in both.

You might not like it, but the Bulldogs are the standard of college football right now. They've earned it, while Kirby Smart is working to preserve it. Yes, the offseason has been filled with tragedy and controversy, but it's not as if Kirby is trying to brush it under the rug.

If you haven't already noticed, the Bulldogs are under intense scrutiny for traffic violations and with one of them resulting in the death of two people. For everything I've heard from opposing fans over the last six months, Kirby Smart doesn't know how to run a clean program and it's all falling apart.

"I'm disappointed anytime we have traffic incidents," Kirby Smart said Tuesday. "It's very evident when you look at it, we've had traffic citations and incidents throughout the history of being at the University of Georgia. We actually don't have more now than we've had in the past.

"What concerns me most is the safety of our players, and when you drive at high speeds it's unsafe. We don't want that to happen."

Head Coach Kirby Smart of the Georgia Bulldogs speaks during Day 2 of the 2023 SEC Media Days at Grand Hyatt Nashville on July 18, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Johnnie Izquierdo/Getty Images)

But Kirby has not punished these players enough according to some fans or pundits, who have no idea what goes on inside the football building. This is where reality meets the road, while we try to decide how to describe the ongoing circumstances that involve student-athletes.

"But I'm also smart enough to understand and know that 18­ to 20-year olds is when this happens," Smart noted. "It's when it happened to me as a student-athlete. That's when speeding happens. What we want to do is take that out and make it safe and not have high speeds. As long as they don't get a speeding ticket, it should not be a super speeder."

Kirby Smart Touches On The Hazing Incident At Northwestern

The ongoing story of Northwestern's hazing scandal reached the SEC podium on Tuesday. While discussing the culture at Georgia, Kirby Smart was asked about how he addresses the topic with his current players. In the Bulldogs case, they better not piss-off the freshmen players who are making an impact on the field.

This was somewhat of the narrative Kirby Smart was preaching Tuesday when discussing the Northwestern situation. Though he did not name the Wildcats program, Smart touched on the fact that he wanted to see a brotherhood, not kids being driven away.

"I remember being a freshman and having to carry people's trays and getting your head shaved when I was a freshman back in 1994. I just thought that was so dramatic.

"But now those freshmen, the guys we sign, they have to play. So when you create this separation of they have to do this and they have to do that, they're not ready to play," Kirby Smart noted about hazing. "They're like a different team. So we do more of a brotherhood. Take this guy in. He's at your position. Can you go out and teach him and walk him through, embrace those guys and make sure they understand that hazing will not be tolerated, and if it is, they need to let us know.

Smart doesn't have to walk on eggshells with this topic. Look at the amount of talent we've seen on the football field that were freshman during his tenure in Athens.

"That's one of the things we talk about each other, not so much hazing as it is welcoming the freshmen," Smart noted.

At the end of the day, most folks around the country aren't going to give him a pass on both. It might be easy to say that Smart doesn't tolerate his freshman being hazed, but hasn't put his foot down when it comes to speeding around campus. In this scenario, Smart should be more outspoken about how he's looking to change his program.

As you can tell, the entire Bulldogs offseason has centered around off-field incidents. It's time for Kirby Smart to get this train back on the tracks, whatever it takes. As to how he does it, well that's none of your business.