Kirby Smart has used Georgia’s 27-8 win over Florida to make a blunt point about college football’s NIL era: players are practising less, getting injured more, and in many cases are now making more money than he did until he was 40.
The Georgia Bulldogs head coach did not hide his frustration when talking about the way the sport has changed. Smart said he thinks back to the teams he coached in 2021 and 2022 and remembers groups that were physical and trained hard, but believes that standard is harder to reach now.
Smart: the culture has changed
Smart’s argument was simple. In his view, the modern environment is not producing the same edge that defined his earlier teams. “Everybody is practising less, but everybody’s getting injured more,” he said, before adding: “I think about the teams we had in ’21 and ’22, and how physical they were and how they practiced.”
That is the heart of the debate. The coach is not just talking about effort in one game. He is pointing to a wider culture shift, where NIL and the transfer portal have changed the incentives around practice habits, competition for jobs and the urgency that once drove players every day.
Smart went further, saying: “We can’t even get close to that now.” He also suggested the issue may be linked to motivation, adding: “If it’s a different culture that guys don’t want to as much, I don’t know.”
Why the pay comparison matters
The most striking line came when Smart compared today’s players with his own career path. “They were definitely hungrier, because there was a motivation to make it,” he said. “A lot of these guys, honestly, they make more than I did until I was 40.”
That comparison gets to the centre of the Kirby Smart college football player pay discussion. It is not just about whether players are compensated. It is about what that compensation does to the daily habits that coaches believe separate good teams from elite ones.
Smart’s comments also sit inside a wider reality across the major conferences, where parity is increasing as players move for bigger paydays and starting roles. The result is a sport in which rosters can change quickly, standards can be harder to sustain, and the edge between teams can be thinner than ever.
There are already examples of coaches reshaping programs fast. Curt Cignetti turned Indiana into an undefeated, National Championship-winning team in two seasons, while Bob Chesney made UCLA into a legitimate College Football Playoff contender. That is the modern landscape Smart is responding to: high movement, rapid change and pressure to adapt.
For Georgia, the message is clear. Smart believes the sport has changed and he is not pretending otherwise. The question now is whether his programme can keep matching the demands of the new era, even if he feels the old one produced something harder, tougher and more physical.
