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No active college football coach has more national championships as Georgia’s Kirby Smart.
Yet the two title runs in 2022 and 2021 are not enough to have Smart as the nation’s top head coach.
Per a group of ESPN analysts, Smart is the No. 2-ranked coach in the nation. Indiana’s Curt Cignetti vaulted over Smart after the former led Indiana to an unbeaten season and national championship.
Cignetti earned 94 points from the panel and five first-place votes. Smart came in second with 90 points and four first-place votes.
“It takes a special coach to wrangle all the forces at a blue blood the way Kirby Smart has at Georgia while dominating the SEC,” ESPN’s Dave Wilson said. “If it were easy, everyone who has had one of those jobs could do it.”
Ohio State’s Ryan Day came in third with 80 points, while Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman came in fourth, while Dan Lanning slid in at fifth.
Perhaps the reason for Smart’s slight fall can be traced to how the Bulldogs have performed in the College Football Playoff of late.
The Bulldogs have yet to win a College Football Playoff game since the field expanded to 12 teams. In 2024, Georgia fell to Notre Dame. Last season, Ole Miss upended Georgia’s season.
“Sure, consecutive CFP semifinal losses in the Sugar Bowl have been disappointing endings for the back-to-back SEC champs,” ESPN’s Max Olson said. “But I still think Smart’s track record of acquiring and developing blue-chip talent and consistently winning at the absolute highest level can’t be beat.”
While Indiana and Cignetti have recently ascended to the top of the sport, few teams have been able to maintain the level of consistency that the Bulldogs have under Smart. Georgia has finished in the top seven of the final AP Poll in each of the past nine years. The Bulldogs are the only team to make the College Football Playoff in four of the previous five seasons.
Smart, entering his 11th season, has turned the Bulldogs into one of the most stable and safest bets in college football. Georgia should once again have a strong team in 2026, as it brings back a ton of contributors from last year’s team that went 12-2 and won the SEC.
“They are the safest floor in college football,” ESPN’s Greg McElroy said on a recent episode of the Always College Football Podcast. “They are still a machine that will keep getting to the dance and likely still being involved in the dance for the foreseeable future.”
Georgia will open the 2026 season on Sept. 5 against Tennessee State. The contest is set for a 3 p.m. ET start on ESPN+/SEC Network+.
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