University of Georgia Athletics
Watching Teachers At Work
August 06, 2016 | Football
We captured four fan interviews about what it was like to have an open practice for the first time since the Vince Dooley era. Everyone we talked to was extremely excited to see Smart and the team in action.
By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer
When we think of a head football coach, especially a major college head coach, we typically think of the guy roaming up and down the sideline during a game or speaking into a microphone after it. We think of big salaries and widespread adulation.
What we think less of, unless you've been at a practice and know where to look, is that same head coach being hands-on like a third-grade teacher as he instructs a player on how to better get off a block or any of the million other things coaches teach players.
If you watched Georgia head coach Kirby Smart during the football team's open practice Saturday afternoon at Sanford Stadium, the Bulldogs' sixth preseason practice, you saw a teacher at work. It's not something Bulldog fans get to see often: coaches really in their element, teaching the game.
Smart looked less like a 40-year-old at the helm of one of college football's top programs and more like a twenty-something position coach whose only responsibility that day was to get every one of his guys better. He spent a lot of time working with the defensive lineman, at one point putting on a big padded sleeve over his right arm that the players swiped at as they would the arm of an offensive lineman in their path. And it sure didn't look like they took it easy just because that was their head coach's arm they were swatting.
It was Fan Day at the stadium, with a 45-minute autograph session after practice, and there were several thousand fans on hand by the time the players ran onto the field. Some members of Georgia's staff stood by the gate as the players approached the field and they shouted "Hit it running" about 200 times in the two minutes or so it took for all of the Bulldogs to reach the field.
The fans gave the players a rousing welcome, though few were sitting anywhere near the field. Most of the fans, very, very smartly on a hot, sunny day, were nestled up in whatever shade they could find: in the club level seats, in the shadowed seats underneath club level, or in the large scoreboard's large shadow, moving with the shadow as it moved during the two-hour practice.
Smart and all the coaches burned plenty of calories, though nothing compared to the players, as the moved from one end of the field to the next, and back again, as each period called for different players and positions to be in different spots. Football practice can often look like organized chaos to someone not used to it, which it kind of is.
During period nine, freshman quarterback Jacob Eason connected with freshman wideout Tyler Simmons on a 35-yard touchdown pass, with Simmons bringing the ball in deep in the right corner of the end zone. The completion drew perhaps the loudest cheer of the practice, which featured several moments when the few thousand in attendance reacted with oohs and aahs and applause.
A little later Eason threw a deep ball up for grabs that All-SEC safety Dominick Sanders waited under like a punt return and picked off with ease. Eason, like every freshman, sophomore, junior and senior, is learning every day and every snap.
There would have been a louder eruption during period 12 when running back Nick Chubb caught a pass about 10 yards down field and showed off a few moves before the whistle was blown. The reaction to Chubb's moves, 10 months after a major knee injury, was muted because thousands of the fans had already left the seats and lined up by Gate 10 for the upcoming autograph session with the players and coaches.
Smart met with the media Saturday morning in the team meeting room at Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall. He was asked about how he wanted his players to respond to a public practice, to having an audience for the first and only time before Georgia opens its season Sept. 3, against North Carolina at the Georgia Dome.
"We're still in day six install and (it's important) that they focus on what they have to do," he said. "Now the distraction becomes just because somebody is in the stands and just because you got your picture taken before practice, does that change your demeanor? Does that change how you practice? Does that change how you react to coaching? Does that change how you react to when somebody kicks your butt.
"It's very important to me that they handle that the right way, because if they don't handle that the right way today, they certainly won't in the Georgia Dome in however many days."
The coaches will see a thousand things on the practice film that need correcting, but from the outside it sure looked like a successful day. If nothing else, it gave us a glimpse at a part of the game, a critical part that occupies much more of their time than games, that we seldom get to see.
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
