Last weekmon the site we wrote about Kirby Smart claiming that coaches outside of the sec are negatively recruiting against his and other SEC teams. On Monday, it got a little more interesting when Paul Finebaum added fuel to the fire.
Finebaum, while on 94.5 FM radio, a Birmingham based radio station, stated he thought that Smart was talking about Dabo Swinney.
“This is an opinion, let me make that clear, but yes, it was a shot at Dabo Swinney. And as he was saying it I thought it was pretty obvious that it was because he was talking about recruiting. I’d have to go look at the transcript but it left no doubt. He was talking about Dabo Swinney because of the proximity in the recruiting battles.
There’s no one else that could be in consideration because Ohio State would not be doing that based on their recruiting prowess. And I really, you know, if you go outside the SEC, who else really matters? Clemson is the only threat to Georgia outside the SEC for most players. So, I don’t think he really left much to the imagination and it was toward the end of the interview and he had to go do another interview. Otherwise, I may have tried to, you know, be a pesky reporter but that’s who I thought he was talking about. Absolutely.”
Dabo and crew have been competing with SEC schools in recruiting for years and are one of the few teams, outside of the sec, that has shown the ability to last at the top of college football in the College Football Playoff Era. That’s something that makes Smart’s comments strange. You don’t have to really sell kids on your program when you are already competing at the top of the FBS. For those that missed the statement by Smart. He stated last week…
“You probably would believe it, but you wouldn’t believe what some coaches outside our conference tell kids. “They’ll sell to a kid that it’s better to not go to the SEC because it’s too tough.”
He then went on to state in his comments about recruiting…..
“Well, that’s not the way the NFL GM’s are looking at it and that’s not the way the NFL coaches are looking at it. They want to take kids that want to compete at the highest level, that want to go play in those big-time match-ups, and that’s what the kids want. They want to go play in the biggest games in the biggest places, and that’s what they aspire to do.
So, for a coach in maybe another conference to sell, ‘Hey, it might be an easier path to come over here and go this way,’ it just speaks volumes. You want kids to be able to see through that. It’s too competitive, too physical. You might get beat up. You might get banged up, and you might not have as good of a career there you’d have somewhere else.”
The way it looks to some is that the Tigers are recruiting so well it is starting to bother Smart and UGA’s recruiting so he is attempting to come up with a way to save face and get recruits to look at his program a little closer.
Something else worth noting about Smart’s is the fact that this is what recruiting is all about. How many coaches are going around telling kids they should choose their school because they have more “competition?”
Here is the link to hear Finebaum’s comments from the Roundtable on Monday. So you can hear his statements on the situation.
https://omny.fm/shows/the-roundtable-wjox/4-27-paul-finebaum/embed
