ATHENS, Ga. (AP) The Georgia Bulldogs have a new special teams coordinator after more staff changes announced Wednesday by head coach Kirby Smart.
Kirk Benedict, who served as special teams analyst the last two seasons, has been promoted to replace Scott Cochran.
According to Smart, Cochran and offensive analyst Darrell Dickey both resigned to pursue other opportunities.
How Nick Saban’s recruiting and Kirby Smart’s
In December 2015, during his first press conference as Georgia’s new coach, Kirby Smart answered a query from an Atlanta Banner-Herald reporter.
When did you think you were ready to take on the role of head coach?
“It really helps when you work at an organization like Alabama under Nick Saban,” Smart remarked. Many have said, ‘Why not accept the head job of a small school?’ To be honest, I think that being a part of a big program and being around Coach Saban helped me mature more.”
While Saban transformed the Crimson Tide into a recruiting machine and established Alabama as a modern college football powerhouse, Smart spent his nine seasons in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, from 2007 to 2015, growing into a relentless recruiter and one of the country’s best defensive playcallers. However, Smart took over as head coach of the Bulldogs this fall, having worked under Saban as an assistant.
In nine seasons at Georgia, Smart has built a powerhouse of his own, amassing a record of 96-17 while matching the same ultra-elite recruiting standard set by his mentor. And for the better part of the past 10 years, up to Saban’s January retirement, the sport’s fiercest elite recruiting wars have been fought between Georgia and Alabama—Smart and Saban.
Since 2017, the programs have finished more than two spots apart in ESPN’s team recruiting rankings only once, combining for six No. 1 classes in that span. Now, following Saban’s departure from Alabama earlier this year, Smart holds the mantle as college football’s preeminent recruiter, one of only three active coaches with a national championship.
On Saturday, No. 2 Georgia visits No. 4 Alabama at Bryant-Denny Stadium, and the Bulldogs and Crimson Tide open a new era of the rivalry with first-year Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer on the opposite sideline. Smart stands alone as college football’s premier recruiter, at least for the moment, led here by the path laid out by his mentor and the recruiting battles they fought.
“I think [my time at Alabama] made me who I am today because the demand for excellence is met by none other than [Saban],” Smart said this summer at SEC media days. “So, that standard he set for me, day in and day out, he met himself.”
Across Smart’s first nine recruiting cycles with Georgia, the 48-year-old coach has turned in eight top-three classes, per ESPN rankings, the same as Saban at Alabama in 2007-15.
Neither Smart nor Saban needed much time to get the recruiting operation on the tracks.
After signing the nation’s 17th-ranked class in 2007, Saban notched top-three classes in each of the next eight cycles, capped by four straight No. 1 classes from 2012 to 2015. Over that span, Alabama signed 16 five-star prospects, 169 four-star recruits, produced 25 eventual consensus All-Americans, and made 39 NFL draft selections, including 16 first-round picks.
That initial run of high-powered recruiting classes featured some of the offensive gems of Saban’s early years with the Crimson Tide. But the national titles Saban delivered in 2009, 2011, and 2012 were built on defense. A key figure in Alabama’s stockpiling of defensive talent in those years? Kirby Smart.
Leave a Reply