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Georgia coach Kirby Smart is one of the preeminent personalities in college football and is widely considered the best coach in the sport now that former Alabama Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban retired in January. It also helps his reputation that he has won consecutive national championships and his team has been ranked as the No. 1 in the AP Preseason Top 25 Poll again.
Smart started his coaching career with an administrative assistant role for the Bulldogs before accepting the defensive backs and later on, the defensive coordinator job at Valdosta State.
Between 2002 and 2003, he took a position as a graduate assistant with the Florida State Seminoles under legendary coach Bobby Bowden as he obtained his master's degree at the institution.
Smart then started his long affiliation with seven-time national championship-winning coach Nick Saban when he accepted a position as the defensive backs coach at LSU.
Although he went back to Georgia to become the running backs coach, Smart ultimately followed Saban to the NFL with the Miami Dolphins before joining him at Alabama as the defensive coordinator for eight years.
Finally, Kirby Smart returned to Georgia in 2016, where he has found tremendous success, winning two SEC championships and two national championships.
Kirby Smart praises FSU coaching experience
Ahead of last year's Orange Bowl pitting Georgia Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart against the Florida State Seminoles, Smart revealed why he left his defensive coordinator job at Valdosta State to become a graduate assistant at FSU in 2003.
"Yeah, I was a defensive coordinator at Valdosta State and decided to go be a graduate assistant, which people would say was a step-down, but to be in a room with Mickey Andrews, Odell Haggins, Joe Kines, Jody Allen, Kevin Steele, a lot of really good minds in college football, it helped shape me," Smart said.
Smart got to be on legendary FSU coach Bobby Bowden's staff, and he highlighted the experience as crucial to how he turned out to be as a coach due to the lessons learned in that year in Florida.
"To be sitting in a staff room with coach Bowden for two years and getting to see how he ran the team and commanded the respect of the team was really instrumental in my upbringing as a coach," Smart said. "Two of the best years I had, I got a graduate degree from FSU and was able to be 45 minutes from my hometown and just a tremendous experience for me."
Kirby Smart sympathizes with FSU CFP snub
When the Florida State Seminoles were controversially snubbed for a spot in the 2024 College Football Playoff despite finishing the regular season unbeaten and winning the ACC championship, Kirby Smart sympathized with the team he has a connection with.
During a news conference before the schools met in the Orange Bowl, the Georgia coach, whose program was also snubbed due to the SEC championship game loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide, commiserated with his former team.
"I know firsthand how hard it is to have an undefeated season," Smart said. "It is hard. It's hard to win games in any conference. It's hard to win games repeatedly. He had a perfect season and won every game. That's really hard to do. I empathize with anybody that goes undefeated and doesn't get in."
Kirby Smart being a graduate assistant at FSU is often overlooked in the legendary coach's formative journey to become the coach that he is today.
