The recruiting dead period is over.
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Official visits will be held this weekend.
Alabama beat Clemson 45-40 on Monday night to win the national championship.
That left Smart with about five weeks to juggle his duties with Alabama while also recruiting for Georgia and building his staff. “Now’s the hottest time there is for recruiting”.
“It can affect your April (academic progress rate) and graduation rate, but at the end of the day, they’ve got to decide what’s best for them, and we can’t sacrifice our goals and culture”. There’s no downtime now. “All of the people I’ve talked to who have taken head jobs and dealt with that first transition and change in culture, there’s going to be kids that were so loyal to that coach or that staff or some staff member that they feel like they need to take a chance to go look somewhere else”. Weve got to use that in recruiting, and we will.. After two years there, he went to work as a defensive backs coach at Miami (Ohio) for one season in 1999. Soon after, Smart was on a plane headed to Athens. I had to do that as a coach.
“I think everybody recruits their own individual way”, Smart said. “There will also be times that I’ll be very involved defensivvely”. “That’s how you develop relationships”.
Though Richt won 74 percent of his games at Georgia and 76 percent his last two seasons, Smart arrives from an Alabama program guided by Nick Saban that is 98-12 since the start of the 2008 season.
“He told me he would help me any way he could, and he wants to keep that relationship open”, Smart said.
McGee is relatively new to college, having come from Georgia Southern, and prior to that serving as an analyst on Gus Malzahn’s staff at Auburn. “Number one, that we won the national championship at the University of Alabama and to finish that the right way was a relief….” They’ve seen that product.
“I think they have a pretty good understanding of that here”. We’re going to make sure that every kid understands that, and it’s a tough competitive culture, but it’s going to be done through our eyes, our window and that’s what we want to establish in the offseason. … I think theres proof in the pudding.
He told players he planned to have one-on-one meetings with them probably after national signing day.
Smart said addressing a room full of players as a head coach was “what I’ve always wanted to do”. I got to meet with [the current UGA team] and have a conversation with those guys. The weekends will be important.
Smart stated there will be no down time.
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The good thing is the replacement might already be in Tuscaloosa.
