Spurrier: Being an alumnus won’t help Georgia’s Smart win games

Steve Spurrier remembers coming back, after all those years away, and seeing the familiar faces. Professors who were still around. Athletics staffers who had never left.

Former Georgia coach Ray Goff talks about how comfortable it feels. At first. Then, how familiarity breeds contempt.

Ralph Friedgen tells how personally he took it when the rich fellow alumnus at Maryland said something bad about their football program. And how happy Friedgen was to prove him wrong.

There’s something different about being the head coach at the school from which you graduated, where you played and grew during formative years. It can be special. It can give you an advantage.

And it can be risky.

So, as Kirby Smart takes over at Georgia, his alma mater, those men know exactly what Smart is going through and what lies ahead.

Smart was hired because Georgia wants him to do what Mark Richt couldn’t, win a national championship. But if Smart leads his alma mater to the title, it would be a rare feat.

Phillip Fulmer is the last head football coach to win the national championship at his alma mater, Tennessee in 1998. Prior to that it was Spurrier, at Florida two years earlier. Alabama’s Bear Bryant is the only other head coach to do so (albeit six times) since Notre Dame’s Frank Leahy in 1949.

It’s also not common, in general, to take over at one’s alma mater: Smart and Missouri’s Barry Odom — also a new hire — are the only ones in the SEC. And only 18 of 128 head coaching jobs in FBS are alumni, including the man Smart replaced at Georgia. Mark Richt is now back “home” at Miami.

Timing can be everything. Spurrier called it “somewhat of a wonderful miracle” that Florida had an opening after the same 1989 season in which he led Duke to an ACC championship.

“It certainly was a dream come true,” Spurrier said. “When I got into coaching, I never even thought I’d have any chance to be the head coach at my alma mater. I was just hoping to, maybe, be a head coach somewhere, have a decent career, make enough to support a wife and three kids. But, yeah, it worked out pretty well.”

So how much does it help to take over at the same place you played, to know the ins and outs, and where the bodies are buried? Opinions differ.

Spurrier, who wrapped up an almost 11-year tenure at South Carolina, a place he hardly knew, isn’t sure how much being a UGA graduate will help Smart.

“I think it'll help make him welcomed around campus, booster clubs and things of that nature,” Spurrier said. “But will it help him win games? I don’t know. Usually, that comes down to a bunch of really good ballplayers, and solid coaching, and a good quarterback. Those kinds of things are, I think, far more important than whether you’re an alumnus of the school.”

This story was originally published January 28, 2016 at 10:33 PM with the headline "Spurrier: Being an alumnus won’t help Georgia’s Smart win games."