SEC media days don’t hold many surprises for Kirby Smart anymore.
This week’s trip to Tampa will be his 10th as Georgia’s head coach — more than any other active coach in the league. He’ll field the usual rounds: questions about his three player reps, the big-picture issues facing college football, and that much-discussed group chat he shares with other SEC coaches. It’s all familiar territory at this point. Even quarterback Gunner Stockton is making his second appearance at the event.
For Georgia, this week is business as usual. And precisely because there’s nothing new about the Bulldogs, don’t expect them to command the conversation in Tampa — defending conference champs or not. There are flashier, newsier storylines this year.
Texas rolls in with Arch Manning again. A year ago, the Longhorns were the media’s pick to win the league and then missed the College Football Playoff entirely. This time they’ve got a new defensive coordinator in Will Muschamp, who was most recently in Athens as a Georgia analyst in 2024 and, before that, a co-defensive coordinator. Texas also went aggressive in the portal, betting big on this season. The Longhorns speak Thursday, which will make the final day one of the busiest.
Lane Kiffin takes the podium that same day. He’s a media-days veteran, having represented Ole Miss and Tennessee before, but in 2026 he does it as LSU’s head coach. The Tigers reworked their roster with splashy recruiting and portal additions, though that’s a footnote next to the splash Kiffin himself made — his exit from Ole Miss was messy, and he figures to draw some pointed questions about it. LSU also goes Thursday.
Smart may be the most established name in the room, but five new coaches will make their media-days debut. Kentucky’s Will Stein goes Monday; Auburn’s Alex Golesh follows Smart on Tuesday; Florida’s Jon Sumrall and Ole Miss’s Pete Golding are up Wednesday; and new Arkansas coach Ryan Silverfield speaks Thursday.
As the league’s longest-tenured coach, Smart can mostly float above the noise. And unlike the SEC spring meetings, he isn’t likely to get peppered about the future of the sport. For the first time since spring practice wrapped in April, he can keep the focus squarely on his own team.
He will have a few injury situations to address, with running back transfer Dante Dowdell the latest. The fact that Smart brought center Drew Bobo to Tampa is a good sign for where the senior stands in his recovery from a foot injury.
On the roster front, longtime recruiting staffer David Cooper is officially no longer with the program. There are jersey notes, too: incoming freshman Justice Fitzpatrick will wear No. 6, and guard Dontrell Glover switches to No. 58 after wearing No. 63 last season.
With Stockton speaking, count on questions about how he plans to build on his first year as the starter. Despite finishing seventh in Heisman voting, he likely won’t top the Preseason All-SEC quarterback ballots — that race figures to come down to Manning and Ole Miss’s Trinidad Chambliss, especially after how Chambliss closed last season. That included ending Georgia’s year with a standout performance in the College Football Playoff.
That’s part of the backdrop hanging over the Bulldogs all week: back-to-back one-and-done Playoff appearances. It’s a big reason the buzz in Tampa will land elsewhere.
The truth is Georgia has become the SEC’s steadiest program, reaching the conference title game in eight of the last nine seasons. That kind of consistency has almost become boring — everyone simply pencils the Bulldogs into the mix by season’s end. The questions about this team have less to do with July and August and more to do with December and January.
Georgia has proven far better at winning games than generating headlines. So while other programs soak up the spotlight this week, Smart will probably roll out a new catchphrase, stick to the basics, and keep his eyes on the season ahead.
