UGA Football: Kirby Smart Defends the Culture of the UGA Football Program, Including Racing and the Tragic Accident

OPENING STATEMENT

“I think the first thing I’ll address and talk about a little bit is the expectations we have here at Georgia for our student-athletes. Certainly, we haven’t met some of those requirements, and we want our student-athletes to meet those, and we take those things very seriously. The standards that have been created here for a long time, that doesn’t change, and we want our players to live up to those. The mistakes they make, we treat them like we do our kids. We discipline them. We try to prevent them. We try to educate them. We try to do all we can to help our student-athletes in a positive way. It’s been a tough go with the death of Chandler and Devin. As you guys know, it was a tragic accident. Our players have been through a lot. When you talk about the health and the mental health that some of our guys have needed since the accident, it’s been a really tough go of it for them. I feel like our players are starting to be able to acknowledge and they understand that when you make mistakes, the decisions that are costly can cost you your life. That’s not to be taken lightly. I think our guys understand that, and continue to educate them, and we’ll continue to do all we can as a university to make sure they behave and do that in a proper way. I am very strongly in belief that we have a great group of young men on our football team. We have a great culture on our football team. We’ve had our highest GPA we’ve ever had. In the fall we have the most kids doing a lot of the community outreach. It is really positive. So there’s a lot of good there that comes out of our kids that probably doesn’t get noticed as well, especially with the things that have happened here recently.

ABOUT RACING

“Yeah, to be honest with you, I have never been a part of a program where that was something you had to repeatedly address. As I said in the past, we had a session this summer where we brought in Athens-Clarke County Police and UGA Police and addressed a lot of these issues with our team, actually, in a team meeting setting and played some video of things that were going on in Atlanta with drag racing and things, things that just concern you. We do that with drugs and alcohol. We do that with domestic violence. We try to have education programs, but education is not enough. You have to do a great job of making sure your players understand the risk and dangers that are out there. With vehicles especially nowadays that go really fast, you’ve got to be extremely careful. We try to educate and make sure our players understand those risks, but the ongoing part of that is to continue to educate them and let them know. That’s a programming piece for us we do in the fall and then we could in the spring. The two times where we’re really down for football we spend a lot of time educating our players of the dangers they can get into, and that’s one that we’ll continue to do, and we treat it very seriously.

IS THE PROGRAM OUT OF CONTROL?

“Absolutely, we’ve got complete control of our program and our kids in our program. Do kids make mistakes? Yes, young student-athletes make mistakes. They do. It happens all across the country. It happens here. There’s no lack of control for our program. I think our kids across the board will tell you that we have an incredible culture here. We have a connective tissue that brings our team together. Our guys do make mistakes. That’s historically probably going to happen when you are 18- to 22-year-olds. Our job as coaches is to prevent that from happening. That starts with me, and you do it by how you educate your players and how you discipline your players. We’ll continue do that at a high standard.

ABOUT THE RENTAL VEHICLE

“Well, first thing I want to clarify is it’s no policy or lack thereof policy caused this accident. Policies are constantly under review and trying to find things to do better, but no policy or lack thereof, and we found no reason to change anything we have. Our workers in our department have an ability to drive a vehicle or not drive a vehicle that’s rented, and those student workers and the two young ladies had permission to drive those vehicles. And they were driving them when they should not have been driving them, and that policy was broken. It’s to be understood that you cannot take a vehicle when you are not doing your duties, and they were not participating in their duties at that time.