In December of 2015, new Georgia coach Kirby Smart met with his team for the first time. He held his fingers one inch apart, explaining how close they’d been under former coach Mark Richt to playing at the highest levels of football. Smart promised the Bulldogs he’d teach them how to traverse that inch, the gulf between excellent and elite, that Georgia’s teams could never quite navigate.
Two years later, Smart has won an SEC title, secured the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class and has the No. 3 Bulldogs in the College Football Playoff semifinal against No. 2 Oklahoma on Monday. Georgia had always recruited well, consistently made top-tier bowls and been competitive in the SEC. But Smart figuring out that final inch has pushed the program into a new paradigm, staring down his old boss, Alabama coach Nick Saban, faster than anyone could have anticipated.
A deep dive into Smart’s recruiting infrastructure – his spin on Saban’s fabled “Process” – illuminates just how Smart has nudged Georgia into the highest echelon of college football. The breadth, intensity and sheer numbers in Georgia’s recruiting operation combine with Smart’s maniacal insistency that the recruiting be based on personal touches. There’s nine new full-time employees in Georgia’s football office, most focused on recruiting, being paid more than $500,000 annually to fuel the operation. There’s also a phalanx of more than 60 support staff members, interns and students who have created one of the most vast and sophisticated recruiting ecosystems in college football. “Kirby took it from a Mustang and turned it into a Ferrari,” said Georgia linebacker coach Kevin Sherrer, who worked under Richt.
Smart laid out his vision for Georgia’s recruiting to athletic director Greg McGarity in his interview. And soon after he got the job, Smart put together a flow chart that made his vision and desires tangible. It explained in color-coded detail the jobs he needed to fill, jobs needed to be created and the reporting structure and hierarchy of everything. Hires weren’t made just to add bodies, McGarity pointed out, as every role had a function and intention. And many of those revolved around Smart’s philosophy of personalized recruiting – invitations to games through graphics via direct messages on Twitter, a focus on assistant coaches directly contacting prospects every day and enough mailings with personalized graphics to kill half of the Amazon rain forest. “We all have great weight rooms, we all have great things like that in the SEC, it’s about what makes you different,” Smart said. “That’s the relationship building.”
So how has Smart elevated the program to compete at the highest level with Saban? It starts with working harder and smarter. The recruitment of Christopher Smith II, a four-star cornerback from Hapeville Charter in Atlanta, illustrates how a massive macro operation can deliver Smart’s preferred personalized touches in the micro.
Smith’s father, Chris Smith, said he’d met and interacted with Kirby Smart in person “at least eight times” before his son committed. That included games, unofficial visits and even a scavenger hunt on a recruiting weekend where taking a picture with Smart was an item. (“That was the most fun thing,” Smith said, “it’s those little things.”)
Smith contrasted that with Alabama, where his son visited five times. “We were recruited by Alabama for a year, and I only met Nick Saban one time,” Smith said. “It was like, wow, I didn’t feel like it was important enough for him to build a relationship with us. It means something when the head coach takes time out of his day to talk to you.”
It’s too early to declare Smart’s recruiting version of the process a better one, but the success can’t be argued. In Smith II’s bedroom in Atlanta there’s a giant black storage container filled with mail, graphics and lanyards from just Georgia. It’s so heavy – Smith estimated 50 pounds – that he needed his son’s help to move it recently. That doesn’t count the graphics and direct messages on Twitter, or the constant phone and text communication from defensive coordinator Mel Tucker and assistant coach Dell McGee. They knew his high school team, schedule and offseason events better than those close to him. “Even when he was playing in the 7-on-7 circuit, they’d send mail about games,” Smith said. “There were some things I didn’t even know he was playing in and they did. It was like, ‘Whoa, how do they know this stuff?’ ”
