Georgia coach Kirby Smart clarifies remarks on player pay, calling college earnings 'awesome'

Several years into the name, image and likeness era in United States college football, many believe the sport has changed. The gaps between teams in the major conferences are dropping, and players who once would have sat on the bench at programs such as Alabama or Ohio State are now starting at smaller schools while bringing in bigger paydays.

Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart brought that debate back into focus with recent comments. After Georgia handled the Florida Gators 27-8, Smart was asked about the number of injuries his team is dealing with and whether playing a tough SEC schedule could contribute to it.

Smart said everybody is practicing less, but everybody is getting injured more. He said the Georgia teams of 2021 and 2022 were far more physical in how they practiced, and that the current team cannot get close to that now.

He added that those earlier players were definitely hungrier, because there was a motivation to make it. In his words, a lot of current players honestly make more than he did until he was 40, and it is simply a different day and age.

On Monday, Smart clarified those comments. He said he did not want to come across as whining, and described young athletes being able to earn money in college sports as awesome.

Smart said he wished players had been paid when he played, because then he might not have had to get a $5,000 job for the summer. His concern, he explained, is not the pay itself but the long-term effect of earning power — the value of a dollar and the outlook of going out into the real world to work for $60,000.

He said the earning power players have while in college is theirs, and more power to them. At the same time, he said it is now even more important to evaluate how a player will respond to making that kind of money, and whether it will affect his ability to contribute to the team and the culture of the program.

Smart recalled that when he was at Alabama, an NFL scout would ask whether being a first-round or second-round pick would change a player. That used to be the scout's job to decide, he said; now it is the coaches' job to decide whether they have the right kind of people in their program.

Another part of his explanation concerned roster limits. When the 2025 House settlement limited rosters to 105 players instead of effectively unlimited numbers, coaches became less willing to go all out in practice and risk injuries. Smart believes that change is also part of what has altered college football.

The combination of NIL and the transfer portal has made rebuilding a program overnight more realistic. The material cited Indiana Hoosiers coach Curt Cignetti, who turned his team into an undefeated, national championship-winning side in just two seasons, and Bob Chesney, who came to UCLA from James Madison and made the Bruins a legitimate College Football Playoff contender, sitting at No. 5 in the latest Associated Press Top 25 poll late in the season.