College football has changed enough that Kirby Smart is willing to say the quiet part out loud.
After Georgia’s 27-8 win over rival Florida on Saturday, the Bulldogs coach was asked about the SEC’s rash of injuries and the game’s overall physical edge, or lack of it. Smart didn’t pretend to have a clean answer, but he did make one thing clear: the sport looks different now.
“It’s a different day and age,” Smart said.
He pointed to the strange disconnect between how much teams are practicing and how often players are getting hurt.
“Everybody is practicing less, but everybody’s getting injured more,” Smart noted.
From there, Smart took the conversation into a place plenty of coaches have been circling around for a while. He compared today’s teams with the Georgia groups from 2021 and 2022, and he said those squads brought a level of edge and urgency that feels harder to find now.
“I think about the teams we had in 2021 and 2022, how physical they were and how they practiced. We can’t even get close to that now,” Smart said.
“Is it different culture that guys don’t want to as much? I don’t know.
They were definitely hungrier, because there was a motivation to make it. A lot of these guys, honestly, they make more than I was making until I was 40.
So it’s just a different day and age.”
Smart’s comments line up with the reality of the NIL era, where players have more financial options and more freedom than they once did. In his view, that changes the pressure points. With guaranteed money available and the transfer portal offering another path to playing time and a bigger payday, the old incentive structure looks a lot different.
The question Smart raised is the one hanging over the sport now: if the money is already there, what pushes players to keep grinding the same way?
That’s a conversation worth watching as the Playoff expands to 24 teams in the coming years.
In Other News...
Georgia Enters A Huge Week With Playoff And Injury Questions
Georgia has reached the point in the season where every update seems to carry extra weight, and this week brings a little of everything. The Bulldogs are two-thirds through both the regular season and SEC play, they just picked up league weekly honors for Chris Cole and Gabe Harris on defense, and the first College Football Playoff rankings are about to drop, with Georgia in position to land near the top of the board.
Kirby Smart used his weekly press conference to touch on injuries, scheduling and the usual late-season roster concerns that start to shape November. Around the program, there was some good news on the hardwood too, with both Georgia basketball teams opening their seasons with wins over NC Central and West Georgia, but football remains the center of attention as the Bulldogs wait to see how healthy they are and where they stand in the playoff race. [Read more 🡒]
Kirby Smart Just Framed Georgias Biggest Ole Miss Problem
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For Georgia, the challenge is not just accounting for a quarterback who can hurt a defense in more than one way, but doing it against an Ole Miss offense built to stress opponents quickly. Smarts comments framed the matchup in plain terms: if Chambliss is comfortable and on time, the Rebels become a much tougher problem to solve. That is the tension hanging over this game now, and it is the one Georgia has to answer before the night gets away from it. [Read more 🡒]
Mike White Sounds Early Alarm After Georgias Sloppy Opener
Georgia opened the 2026-27 season with a 78-62 win over North Carolina Central, but the mood afterward sounded more like a team that had escaped than one that had settled in. Mike White, along with Blue Cain and Kanon Catchings, pointed to the same early issues: shaky defense at times, too many turnovers and a general lack of cohesion that made the victory feel less clean than the final score suggested.
The Bulldogs did force 19 turnovers, which gave them a clear edge, but the offensive rhythm never fully clicked and the shooting from beyond the arc was especially uneven. With Presbyterian up next, Georgia already has a short window to sharpen the details and look more like the team White expects than the one that showed up in the opener. [Read more 🡒]