ATHENS, Ga. — In the nine years Paul Finebaum had been interviewing Kirby Smart, this was as animated as Finebaum had seen Smart. They were on set together last month on Georgia’s campus, a day before the Dawgs’ game against Tennessee. It was three days after the College Football Playoff committee had dropped Smart’s team out of the projected field, and Smart was not hiding his disgust.

“He was great on the air. Off the air, he was out of this world. I mean he was genuinely angry,” Finebaum recalled last week. “I appreciated his candor. But it was a remarkable shift, especially to the last two years.”

And Smart wasn’t done. A night later, he went off on the selection committee again during his ABC postgame interview. And Smart still wasn’t done: A few weeks later, Smart took an unprompted shot — maybe playful, maybe not — at SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who was standing a few feet away.

It has been refreshing for those who want good content. For those who have watched Smart and his sideline antics from afar, it may seem natural. But for those who have watched Smart closely through the years, it’s a stark change, and it says a lot about where Smart and No. 2 Georgia are as they get ready for their CFP quarterfinal.

Smart usually has tried to avoid making headlines, a trait he took from Nick Saban: Do your job, worry about your team, ignore the critics and outside noise. The tone was set the summer of Smart’s first year when then-Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh took a shot at Smart on Twitter about satellite camps. When he asked about it, Smart replied, “What tweet?” with a wry, knowing smile. He was ready to diffuse the story.

This season, Smart has been willing to light the fuse.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs will play Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl. (Joshua L. Jones / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)

After Georgia’s win at Texas, Smart didn’t hold back in his ESPN postgame interview after officials reversed a call in Texas’ favor when fans threw debris on the field: “You know, these players get the best out of me. And I’m so proud of these guys. Because nobody believed. Nobody gave us a chance. Your whole network doubted us. Nobody believed us. And then they try to rob us, with calls, in this place.”

The shot at the “College GameDay” analysts who picked against Georgia wasn’t new. Smart did that after his team’s second national championship win. But “they try to rob us” was uncharacteristic. Smart, a member of the NCAA rules committee, rarely criticized officiating and didn’t join in with Georgia fans belaboring calls after the 2018 national championship game. Now he was jumping in, despite actually winning the game.

After his team’s win over Tennessee, Smart vented his frustration at the CFP committee, once again in his ESPN postgame interview: “I don’t know what they look for. I really don’t know what they look for anymore. I would welcome anybody in that committee to come down to this league and play in this environment.”

And finally, in the interview after the SEC Championship Game win, Smart was asked what getting a first-round bye meant: “It means rest for a team that Greg Sankey and his staff sent on the road … all … year … long!”

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Sankey stood stone-faced a few feet away but only because he couldn’t hear what Smart was saying amid audio issues on stage, according to people who were there. Not that Sankey and his staff could have been particularly thrilled with it; Georgia had just navigated that schedule to a conference championship, so Finebaum on his SEC Network show called Smart “out of line.” (The SEC championship in Atlanta came after three straight home games, so Georgia had been in its home state for almost a month.)

“I probably reacted a little quickly on that, not knowing how convoluted the story (on the stage) was,” Finebaum said. “But it was still a pretty dramatic moment for him.”

Smart was asked last month, after the Tennessee game, why he had been more outspoken this year. He shrugged and said it just has more to do with having more things to be outspoken about.

“The two years previous, I mean, there wasn’t a lot there,” he said. “The year that, we were 14-1 and 15-0, there’s not a lot of complaints. There’s not a lot to fight for. You take care of business on the field and handle your business. You don’t have to say a lot of things.

“That was a pretty unique situation if you’re referring to Texas. I don’t know that I’ve ever been a part of anything like that, and I’m not … I wasn’t upset with them. I just didn’t understand, like, never seen that happen, but I would have said that any year.”

But the next thing Smart said got to the heart of the matter: “I just want to fight for my team and fight for our program because I think we’ve got a deserving group of young men who work really hard, and I’m sure every coach would fight for their guys.”

But this has come amid two years of bad publicity about his program. Ten Georgia players and one staff member have been arrested for driving-related offenses since a January 2023 car crash that killed a player and staff member. There have been arrests for non-driving issues. Given all that, you almost would expect Smart to take the opposite approach and be Mr. Nice Guy as the face of the program.

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Finebaum, however, pointed out that Smart has chosen his words much more carefully when it comes to off-field issues.

“The one thing I’ll give him credit for is despite all the bad news in the offseason I think he navigated it very well,” Finebaum said. “And it didn’t seem to become a constant theme, like situations like that at other schools.”

Finebaum has another theory for Smart’s newfound candor: The pressure is gone. There’s no push for a three-peat or before that a repeat or before that trying to get the first national championship.

“Everything felt more tense (before). You could sense the gravity of the moment,” Finebaum said. “That was all gone a couple weeks ago in Athens. It was me against the world, and he seemed to like it very much.”

Smart has used that Georgia-against-the-world narrative before, especially en route to the second championship. It became such a punch line that Smart backed off it a bit. It was harder to play the disrespect card when Georgia was the consensus No. 1 team, even after not three-peating last year.

Then came this season’s run of on-field adversity. Smart took to calling his team the “never say die Dawgs.” They made things hard for themselves and played down to their competition, but there they still hoisted the SEC championship trophy.

Now it’s on to the Playoff where Georgia may be in the perfect position, at least to Smart’s liking: It’s not the favorite, especially having to go to its backup quarterback, so there are plenty of picks out there for the Bulldogs to be one-and-done in the tournament.

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Somehow, it could be argued that Georgia is playing with house money.

“Ultimately how the season ends is going to help frame the narrative,” Finebaum said. “If somehow Georgia wins the title with everything they’ve overcome, with the schedule, with the Carson Beck injury, I think it will elevate Georgia to an even higher status. And right now, I think they are at the very top shelf of college football. … But I think if (Georgia) can pull this thing off, it won’t make up for not winning a three-peat, but it’s going to put Georgia into a completely different stratosphere.”

(Top photo: Butch Dill / Getty Images)