Kirby Smart is slowly but surely catching Nick Saban.
Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban is the gold standard in college football. He is the greatest college head coach of all time, and he is the person Kirby Smart is chasing.
Saban won seven national championships during his career, so Smart has a long ways to go to catch him there. However, there are other ways that Smart can start approaching Saban’s level and begin to join the conversation of being on the same level as him. In fact, Smart just accomplished something just last week that Saban was never able to do.
Consecutive SEC Championship game appearances
Georgia football clinched their spot in the 2024 SEC Championship game this past weekend after a wild day full of upsets in the SEC. This is now their fourth straight year of making the championship game, which is something that Saban was never able to do.
Saban was only ever able to reach the SEC Championship game in three consecutive seasons, which he did one time from 2014-2016.
Not only has Smart and Georgia reached the title game four years in a row, this is actually the seventh time in the last eight seasons. UGA made it from 2017-2019 as well to match the mark set by Saban and Alabama, and after taking one year off from the SEC Championship game Georgia has now surpassed anything that Saban was ever able to do.
And the best part of this stretch is that Georgia was able to do it in the first year the divisions no longer exist in the SEC. The first thing everyone always mentioned when UGA was making all of these title games was that they were only able to do so because the East division was so weak compared to the West. But Georgia proved that argument invalid this season by making the championship game in the first year the divisions are gone.
Smart has a long ways to go to ever be in the same conversation as Saban. But no one can deny that he is on his way to doing so, and this record is one thing that will help him reach Saban’s level. Now let’s hope he brings more national championships to Georgia, because that is what Smart has to do to catch Saban.
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