Final thoughts on the Turman transfer

Bottom line from reading everyone’s comments over the last couple of days is that there’s a certain amount of missing the forest for the trees thinking going on in response to what’s happened.  Hear me out:

• Smart’s on strong ground when he invokes the standard operating procedure defense.  He’s right to note that Georgia’s stance prior to his arrival was the outlier and that he is doing nothing more than taking things back to their normal order among the programs that are Georgia’s peers.
• None of which changes the point that as policies go, chaining players to a program they no longer wish to play for is not the most defensible of things.  That the same coaches who push for player control have the freedom to move from one school to another makes it difficult to come up with compelling logic for the policy and I think we heard some of that awkwardness from Smart in yesterday’s presser.  (Not to mention that it’s kind of hard to reconcile the somber warnings about the dangers of player transfer with the excitement the Georgia staff displayed about Tyler Catalina’s decision to play his last year of college football in Athens.)
• All that being said, Kirby Smart isn’t being paid to be intellectually consistent.  He’s being paid to direct a football program in a manner that maximizes winning without violating established rules.  As long as he’s doing that, it’s not worth giving him too much grief for following the herd, even if it’s something Mark Richt avoided.
• Which also isn’t to say it isn’t a dickish move on his part.  But the more I think about it, I don’t believe Smart is trying to be a dick with his players, something that isn’t consistent with his approach to coaching.  I do believe, however, he is trying to be a dick with Greg McGarity.  And that he’s doing with purpose and for good reason.
• Remember, this is a job Smart’s been preparing for over a period of some time.  He’s also been in an environment for the past nine years where preparation rules.  So when the opportunity finally arose when the Georgia job came open and was offered to him, it’s hard to believe that Kirby Smart didn’t do his homework.  A program with the resources available that under-performed is a program that a sharp guy like Smart is going to ask questions about before taking.  And who better to ask the questions that needed to be asked than Smart’s good friend Mike Bobo?
• Yes, I’m speculating like crazy out of my hindquarters, but I doubt someone as thorough as Kirby Smart didn’t do his due diligence.  And I doubt that someone like Mike Bobo wasn’t able to let Smart know what he was getting into.
• By that, I mean what we lovingly refer to here as the Georgia Way.  Kirby, I expect, had a very good picture of the dysfunction that marked much of the relationship between the athletic department and the football staff during the course of Richt’s term as he went into contract negotiations with Greg McGarity.
• What we’re seeing now is territory marking, plain and simple.  Keep in mind that by Kirby’s own admission yesterday, it wasn’t necessary to announce a change in transfer policy, as Turman isn’t interested in going to either Florida or Miami.  Yet Smart thought it necessary to announce the change and then spend a considerable amount of time at his press conference explaining why.  Like it or not, he’s comfortable owning it and wants everyone to know that.
• But that’s only half of the story.  The other part is that the new direction has forced Greg McGarity to come up with an even lamer explanation for his change of heart from a mere year ago when he chastised Georgia Tech for blocking the transfer of a basketball player to Fox’ program while patting his back for allowing J.J. Green to play for the genius on the Flats.  The result of that is most of the criticism has been deflected away from Smart, who, after all, changed the policy, to McGarity, who looks insincere.  Take, for example, this observation from Bruce Feldman:  “This is quite the 180 by Georgia and by McGarity, especially, which makes him look very hypocritical… I get why Smart is changing many things about how Georgia football does business. It’s his program now… It’s just a bad look for McGarity and another bad look for big-time college sports.”
• In the end, Smart comes off like a coach who’s taking control of a program in need of more control and McGarity comes off looking weak and inconsistent.  If you’re Kirby Smart and you’re trying to find a way to marginalize the athletic director who made life difficult for your predecessor – who got fired after fifteen years, by the way – it’s hard to see what just happened as anything less than a complete victory. And if Smart indeed manages to pull off a remake and take the program to the next level, I expect the end result will be to reduce Greg McGarity’s role to little more than the guy who signs the checks when Kirby puts them in front of him.

Kirby Smart is prying control of the football program away from Butts-Mehre.  That is definitely not the Georgia Way.  Even if, like me, you’re not happy with the lever he used this time to kick start that process, if that result is something you think needs to happen, even partially, to drag Georgia football out of where it’s been recently, then this isn’t a totally bad thing.  Anyway, that’s how I see it for now.  Your mileage may vary, obviously.