How UGA Became the Best Program in College Football

It is the second day of the first event that signals the pending arrival of football season in the South, and grown men in red and black T-shirts have packed the lobby of the Grand Hyatt in Nashville, eager for a glimpse of their king. Some crane their necks, straining to see the coach who delivered what so many Georgia fans believed would never come. Others record the scene with their phones. A few, sporadically but loudly, bark like dogs. Kirby Smart does not slow down as he walks through the front doors, flanked by communication staffers on his way to the ballroom. “Kirby plans every second of every day,” says Loran Smith, the University of Georgia’s athletics historian and the coauthor of a book with Smart. “He doesn’t want to waste a single second.”