ATHENS — Georgia coach Kirby Smart downplayed his shove of Mississippi State quarterback Michael Van Buren when asked about it after Saturday night’s game and seemed genuinely confused at the time that he was being asked about it. But after reviewing the incident on video later that night, Smart said he knew immediately that an apology was in order.
Smart offered that to coach Jeff Lebby on the phone Saturday night and apologized to the Mississippi State quarterback Sunday, Georgia’s coach shared Monday at his weekly press conference.
“I went back and watched it and didn’t even realize that I had run into him,” Smart said. “But I reached out to coach Lebby that night and talked to him, and he said the kid was great. I talked to Mike (on Sunday) and told him I had no intentions or ill-will towards him at all.”
The SEC reviewed that sideline interaction as well. Commissioner Greg Sankey stressed Monday that coaches cannot make contact with an opposing player, and he issued a public reprimand.
“This play should have resulted in enforcement of an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty,” Sankey told The Atlanta Journal-Constitutional via an email Monday. “As Kirby discussed in his press conference today, he has appropriately reached out to Mississippi State head coach Jeff Lebby and quarterback Michael Van Buren. I am confident the contact was not intentional, and the clear expectation is this conduct will not happen again.”
Smart’s contact with Van Buren occurred when the quarterback ran on to the Bulldogs’ sideline in the fourth quarter of Georgia’s 41-31 win Saturday night. Video replays seem to validate Smart’s assertion that he did not intend to make contact with Van Buren, who simply was making his way back to the field of play.
Smart reiterated Monday that his emotive display was the result of the Bulldogs being in a bad personnel grouping for what State was doing on offense and that he was trying to get down the sideline to communicate that to defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann, who was wearing a headset and actively signaling to the defense when Smart raced toward him.
“Everybody on the sideline during the game knows it’s pandemonium,” Smart explained. “It’s really pandemonium when you’re trying to change personnel and you’ve only got three or four seconds to do it, and we were bad off in that personnel grouping against empty (backfield formation). We actually messed that up the week before. So, I was trying to get to Schumann to get that changed.”
Asked about it by reporters after Saturday night’s game, Van Buren said: “I’m not sure what that was. I was just trying to play my game.”
Said Smart of Van Buren: “He was great. He’s a really good player, gonna be a good player in this league and he played better as the game went on against us.”
Indeed, Van Buren played the game of his life against Georgia. A freshman who was making only his second start because of injuries to the starter, Van Buren hit the Bulldogs with eight explosive plays, including touchdown passes of 35 and 24 yards as well as a 72-yard completion. He finished with 306 yards and three TDs on 20-of-37 passing. He also ran for 15 yards and never was sacked.
Georgia will be in for a greater challenge Saturday as it travels to Austin to take on Texas. The No. 1-ranked Longhorns (6-0, 2-0) are led by quarterback Quinn Ewers, who has completed 73.4% of his passes for 691 yards, eight TDs and two interceptions. Ewers is backed by Arch Manning, who has thrown for 901 yards and nine TDs in four games, two in which he filled in for an injured Ewers.
Smart long has been known as an emotional coach on the sidelines. When Kelee Ringo intercepted Alabama’s final pass at the end of Georgia’s 33-18 win in the 2022 College Football Playoff Championship game, a photo captured Smart leaping several feet off the ground in unison with Ringo’s run. That image has been sold thousands of times over and has been made into paintings that now hang on the walls of hundreds of Georgia fans.
Smart’s sideline demeanor is decidedly different from that of his predecessor. When Mark Richt arrived at UGA in 2001, Georgia fans marveled at his stoic disposition in the course of intensely competitive contests. Later, though, many of those same fans complained of Richt not coaching passionately enough.
Richt happened to attend Monday’s press conference at Georgia’s Butts-Mehre football complex to promote his annual Chick-fil-A Dawg Bowl fundraiser, which will be held Oct. 23 at Showtime Bowl in Athens. So, Richt heard Smart’s exchange with reporters over Saturday’s night’s incident.
“You have to be who you are,” Richt said of coaches’ sideline demeanor. “I’m just this laid-back guy from Nebraska, so that’s how I always was. Kirby’s just being who he is.”
Georgia’s players know that better than anybody. No Bulldog can say he has arrived unless he has been the subject of one of Smart’s tirades, whether it comes in a game or in a practice. It’s practically a badge of honor among those who play for him.
“It’s very intense,” senior safety Dan Jackson said of Smart’s coaching style. “But it’s just another reason that we’re always ready to play, because of the passion and energy that he comes with every single day, not only on Saturdays. But a sideline at a college football game is a very intense place to be, and he does a great job of showing up with intensity and passion.”
Interestingly, one of the four tenets that Smart espouses for Georgia’s football program is “composure.” Specifically, they are “toughness, connection, resiliency and composure.”
Smart was asked if an outburst such as the one that caused him trouble Saturday night was a violation of such codes.
“It depends on what happened,” he said with a laugh. “But, I mean, realistically, that’s something that Jackson Meeks and me talked about last year. We had a fumble or something on a punt return, and I was upset with Ladd (McConkey) and Jackson came over and said, ‘composure card, composure card!’”
Three years ago, Smart had “composure cards” made and passed among player leaders on the team. They are simple business cards with the word “composure” and a “Power G” emblazoned on them. Whenever someone was thought to be losing their cool during a game, either on the sideline or on the field, those players were permitted to hand the offending party a composure card. Meeks did that to Smart during the 2022 national championship season.
But in a physical, passionate sport such as football, an occasional emotional outburst can be beneficial.
“Sometimes that’s intentional,” Smart said. “You’ve got to be intense. But you’ve got to know what you’ve got to do, and that’s important. Our players talk about it all the time. We had several penalties in (the Mississippi State) game that had a chance to lose composure. Those were teaching moments, too. … Those are great teaching moments for players, and I try to do a good job helping them with that.”
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