Kirby Smart keeps winning while Georgia sits well outside the top tier in reported roster spending.
That’s the twist in a recent Athletic report that places the Bulldogs 10th in the SEC and 18th nationally in football roster budget, even as UGA enters the season ranked No. 2 in the AP Top 25 and coming off back-back SEC championship game wins over Texas and Alabama.
According to The Athletic, Georgia is spending somewhere between $31 million and $34 million on its football roster. That figure trails Texas by a wide margin, with the Longhorns reported at $45 million to $55 million. The gap, as reported, lands somewhere between $14 million and $21 million.
A source told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the roster figures they know about do not include the front-loading player acquisition that took place before the current NIL revenue-sharing cap began.
Even with Georgia near the middle of the SEC in reported roster budget, Smart has been firm about the resources available to him.
“We have no issue with resources, facilities, availability,” Smart said at SEC media days.
“There’s never been something that I asked our administration to do from a number to go to to get a player out of the portal or get a player in high school that they weren’t willing to do.”
The spending picture is part of what makes Georgia’s position stand out. Among SEC contenders, only Texas, LSU and a handful of others are believed to be operating in the same neighborhood at the very top of the market. The Athletic’s estimates put Texas A&M at $45 million to $50 million, LSU at $47 million to $50 million, Ole Miss at $39 million to $45 million and Tennessee at $41 million to $43 million.
Other programs reportedly above Georgia include Alabama at $38 million to $42 million, Florida at $31 million to $41 million, South Carolina at $32 million to $35 million and Auburn at $31 million to $35 million.
The report also lists several schools outside the SEC with larger budgets than Georgia, including Ohio State at $49 million to $54 million, Oregon at $48 million to $54 million, Miami at $44 million to $50 million, Notre Dame at $41 million to $48 million, Texas Tech at $38 million to $42 million, Michigan at $36 million to $40 million, Indiana at $36 million to $40 million and Nebraska at $31 million to $35 million.
Smart’s approach last offseason helps explain why Georgia’s number is not higher. The Bulldogs added only nine players through the transfer portal, while losing at SEC-low to the portal. Instead of chasing a long list of outside additions, Georgia spent to keep its own roster together.
That retention model has become part of the program’s identity. Monroe Freeling, the most recent of the 21 first-round NFL draft picks Smart has produced, pointed to that culture when asked why players stick around.
“I just think it’s the culture of our program, you don’t really come to Georgia if you’re just trying to get paid,” Freeling said at the 2026 NFL Combine.
“You come to Georgia to get developed and go to the NFL.”
Smart has echoed that same philosophy, making it clear he trusts Georgia’s internal development more than a wholesale overhaul through the portal.
“When you look across the country, we’ve done as good of a job as anybody of retaining our roster and not having to go wholesale into the portal,” Smart said this fall.
“… We just keep thinking that if we pour into our guys, that our development is going to be better than taking a guy that’s second, third, fourth year that somebody else developed.”
That veteran base is showing up in Georgia’s roster makeup. The Bulldogs have 34 players who have played at least three seasons for the program, up from 25 on last season’s team.
The numbers also line up with the school’s finances. Georgia’s 2025 NCAA financial report showed football brought in $38.9 million of the school’s $42.1 million in ticket revenue and accounted for $44.1 million of its $52.1 million in contributions.
Smart has long framed football as the engine that helps support the rest of the department, including the Olympic sports that have helped Georgia produce three straight Top 10 finishes in the Learfield Director’s Cup.
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