Georgia
Why Kirby Smart Isn’t Going to Take a Job in the NFL
Why Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart isn’t going to take a job in the NFL or the New York Jets job.
While the college football season is in full swing right now, Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart has been linked to an open position in the NFL. Earlier this week, the New York Jets fired head coach Robert Saleh and the organization is now on the search for someone to fill the position. Coach Smart’s name has been attached to the opening. It’s not the first time Smart’s name has been thrown into the ring for a job in the NFL and it likely won’t be the last, but there are multiple reasons why Smart won’t take a job at the professional level.
First of all, Smart is a college football lifer. Since getting his college coaching start in 1999 at the University of Georgia as an administrative assistant, his entire coaching career outside of one year with the Miami Dolphins in 2006 has been spent at the college level. His identity as a coach is completely built around coaching at the collegiate level. The same things that work at the college level do not work at the professional level. It would require Smart to change quite a few things if he were to make the jump.
Second, Smart didn’t just take any head coaching job. He took the job at his alma mater and at a place he loves. You would have a hard time finding a person who loves the University of Georgia more than Smart and his family, so speaking specifically to the New York Jets job, it’s hard to imagine Smart would up and leave his program and the place he calls home to go to the NFL in the middle of the season.
Another crucial aspect of this train of thought is Smart has a 10-year contract worth $130 million that goes through 2033. That means he is earning $13 million per year and is the highest-paid public school coach in college athletics. There are only five coaches in the NFL that are making more money than Smart currently is at Georgia (Kyle Shannahan 49ers, Sean McVay Rams, Jim Harbaugh Chargers, Sean Payton Broncos and Andy Reid Chiefs). For further context, prior to being fired, Saleh was making $5 million per year with the Jets.
It’s understandable why Smart’s name continues to be connected to openings in the NFL as he is widely considered to be the best coach in college football, but making the jump to the professional level never seemed to be in the cards for Smart. He’s the head coach at one of the top programs in all of college football and is one of the highest-paid coaches at both the college and NFL levels. Everything points to Smart staying at Georgia for as long as he wants to continue coaching football.
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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