ATHENS – Who is supposed to provide the juice, the team or the fans?
Kirby Smart’s comments after Georgia’s win over Auburn this past Saturday touched off a debate on that subject within the Bulldog Nation.
Smart was critical of the fans’ level of engagement – not to mention their early exodus – during Georgia’s 31-13 victory at home this past Saturday. By the looks of what was announced as a sellout crowd at Sanford Stadium, there were many no-shows, and a good portion of those who came headed for the exits shortly after the Bulldogs took a 28-10 lead six seconds into the fourth quarter.
Smart certainly noticed, as he shared with sideline reporter D.J. Shockley during his postgame radio interview on the Bulldogs Sports Network.
“To be honest, I’m a little disappointed,” Smart said from the Bulldogs’ locker room. “I’m probably disappointed in our fans for the first time. I thought there was a lack of affecting the game crowd-noise wise, passion and energy. Hey, it was hot, but our guys have full pads on and helmets and they’re pushing. We’re trying to have a home-field advantage like we’ve (dealt with) when we’ve played teams and I can’t get crowd noise? That’s just frustrating.”
There were extenuating factors. Topping the list was it was Homecoming Day. It also was unseasonably hot, with temperatures reaching the mid-80s and exceeding that on the stadium’s always-sun-drenched north side.
There was also this: Saturday’s win was Georgia’s eighth in a row against the Tigers, who the Bulldogs were playing for the 129th time in what’s known as the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry. Coach Hugh Freeze’s team came in with a 2-3 record and was 23.5-point underdog. It left with an 0-3 SEC record.
So, on the surface, there wasn’t much to be excited about it. That was accentuated once the game’s ebb and flow indicated the threat of an upset was not going to be in the offing on Saturday.
There also was the matter of perspective. Georgia was coming off a trip to Tuscaloosa. The electric atmosphere the Bulldogs encountered at Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium seemed very much a factor in Georgia falling behind 28-0 within the game’s first 18 minutes. The Bulldogs rallied but ultimately came out on the short end of a 41-34 final before a sold-out crowd of 100,077 that stayed until the climactic end.
Looking forward to this Saturday, there’s unlikely to be a lot of “juice,” as Smart calls it, as No. 5-ranked Georgia (4-1, 2-1 SEC) plays host to Mississippi State. The Maroon Bulldogs (1-4, 0-2), in their first season under coach Jeff Lebby, are widely considered the worst team in the SEC this year.
Smart was asked at his weekly press conference Monday if he believes it is up to the team and school to create passion and energy for home games or the fans.
“I said what I said and I stand on what I said,” Smart said. “I feel it could have been better. But my job is to coach the football team, and I’m going to do the best job I can in my power. I’ve been at some really good places where there’s times you create a monster, whether it was when I was at FSU or Alabama. You have to appreciate that and create home-field advantages.”
Georgia’s on-field success in recent years certainly has been “monstrous.” Saturday’s win was the Bulldogs’ 27th in a row at home, which leads the Football Bowl Subdivision. Georgia had won 42 regular-season games in a row before it fell to Alabama in Tuscaloosa last Saturday. The Bulldogs have won 50 of their last 53 games dating back to 2020 season.
It would not be a stretch to think Georgia fans may have been spoiled by that success. On the other hand, college football now more than ever is in the entertainment business. Season-ticket holders, in particular, pay a lot of money for their tickets, which require a minimum donation to UGA on top of the price of the individual seats themselves.
Unsolicited, some fans wrote into the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in reaction to Smart’s comments.
“Coaches should coach and not worry about fans staying, leaving or cheering,” said Kenny Silverboard, a native of Atlanta who says he has been going to Georgia games since the mid-1960s. “I was on the south side below the press box in the shade (Saturday) and all the people were talking about was the fans on the north side sitting in the sun and the heat factor of 90-plus. Add selling alcohol and it all adds up. People are going to leave whenever they want, which is their right to do.”
Others didn’t take Smart’s comments quite so seriously. Jon Stinchcomb is a former Georgia All-American and NFL player who served for several years on the UGA Athletic Association’s board of directors.
“They were funny,” Stinchcomb said of Smart’s pointed postgame comments. “He coaches everyone. He coaches his players, he coaches the coaches, now he’s coaching the fans. We’re not free and clear from Kirby offering some correction points. And he’s not wrong. The environment on Saturday was not electric.”
Nick Saban, for whom Smart worked for nine years before becoming the Bulldogs’ head coach, made similar complaints Alabama’s home crowd being disengaged and/or leaving early. Saban went on a memorable, unsolicited rant after a home game against New Mexico State in 2019.
“Everybody wants to be the beast but they don’t want to do what the beast does,” Saban said. “Everybody’s got to make a sacrifice. You want to be the lion? Everybody’s got to do something. Everybody wants to be No. 1. If I asked that whole student section, do you want to be No. 1? Nobody would hold their hand up and say I want to be No. 4. They would all say No. 1. But are they willing to do everything to be No. 1? That’s another question.”
Again, there are a myriad of factors involved in crowd engagement. The primary one is the opponent and what’s at stake.
Georgia has produced some of the most raucous, competitively-intense environments ever at its home games over the years. The 2007 “Blackout Game” against Auburn, Notre Dame in 2019 and Tennessee in 2022 are examples where the visiting team seemed overwhelmed by the atmosphere, never mind the opponent. Those who have been coming to Sanford Stadium for decades point to the 1976 Alabama game -- the Bulldogs defeated Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide 21-0 that day -- as one of the greatest home-game spectacles ever produced on UGA’s campus.
On the other hand, there also have been times when the Georgia football team hasn’t held up its part of the bargain. Losses to Alabama in 2008 and 2015 were particularly disappointing considering the anticipation that preceded them. Smart happened to be defensive coordinator for the visiting Crimson Tide for both of those games.
Accordingly, the team holds more than a little responsibility for giving its fans something to cheer about. In the case of 2024 squad it hasn’t been very flashy, so far at least. Offensively, the Bulldogs haven’t created many statistically-defined “explosives,” which are runs of more than 12 yards or passes of more than 20. Instead, they tend to march down the field on long, multiple-play drives.
Similarly, Georgia’s defense has produced very little “havoc.” That’s a football term for creating turnovers, sacking the quarterback, making tackles for loss and deflecting the football. Unlike the national championship defenses of 2021 and ‘22, this year’s is more of the bend-don’t-break variety.
“If you take pride in your performance each week, then you worry about what you can control,” Smart said Monday. “Our players have an opponent to play, and we’re trying to make it harder on the opponent to play in our environment. It’s a simple-asked question: Did we make it hard on them to play in that game? I don’t know. But the pride-in-performance that our fans take, that our programming takes, that (Athletic Director) Josh Brooks and his staff take and our players take, it’s a collective effort.”
For their part, Georgia’s players insist what happens outside the hedges has little to do with how they perform between the hedges.
“I’m normally fully locked into the game,” said redshirt junior guard Dylan Fairchild. “One thing I’ve noticed is our crowd travels well, and I know we as players appreciate that. But, you know, Saturday I was locked into the game, focused on it is I have to do and that’s really it.”
Said senior outside linebacker Chaz Chambliss: “When I’m on the field, I’m not really big into all the ‘juice’ and all that. I just want to focus on my assignment and getting communication across the field. It’s like dead silence out there if you’re really focused.
After Saturday, it’s going to be a while before the Bulldogs stage another home game. It will be a full month before Georgia plays again on Dooley Field. The next one won’t be until Nov. 16 against Tennessee, which currently is ranked No. 8.
In the meantime, the Bulldogs are going to have to find a way to get up for Mississippi State. Georgia is 20-6 against the visiting Bulldogs, has won 12 of the last 13 in the series and hasn’t lost to State in Athens since Sanford Stadium sat just 36,000 fans in 1956.
While he’s not depending on Georgia’s fans to carry his team to victory, Smart reiterated that he believes they play a part.
“Let’s do this together,” Smart implored the fans. “Let’s help each other and not make it about what he said, and they said. I’m not into that. We need to all be together.
“When I got hired here (in 2016), it was all about pulling in the same direction, creating an atmosphere that’s hard to play in. You win these games at home and maybe you take it for granted if you win so many. … But I know this -- it’s hard. These teams that are going on the road all across the SEC, you make it hard on them by what you do and what you create. So, it’s not about a specific point in time. It’s about us all pulling in the same direction.”
