Kirby Smart Is a Liar. Does It Matter?

Yes, it's only college football. But it underscores a deeper societal rot.

Illustration by Abdelafatah Mukhtar

Kirby Smart is the head football coach of the University of Georgia. He’s very good. And he’s also a very public liar.

Last Saturday night, Georgia was playing Auburn at the always raucous Auburn home stadium. At a key point in the game, clinging to a three-point lead, Kirby Smart ran down the sidelines signaling for a timeout while yelling, “Timeout.” His team was confused about the next play and was about to be penalized for delay of the game.

But while 88,000 fans at Jordan-Hare Stadium and a few million on ABC watched, Coach Smart argued with the ref that he didn’t actually want a timeout and was just clapping. Replay confirmed this was a ridiculous assertion, but bizarrely, the officials reset the ball and did not charge Georgia a timeout.

“So they’re going to give him a redo and not charge him a timeout?” ESPN announcer Sean McDonough asked incredulously. The answer was, yes, that is exactly what happened.

Georgia, which had benefited from a previous mistake by the officials that cost Auburn a touchdown, went on to win 20-10. So why does it matter?

Sure, it’s only a football game, but that’s precisely why it is so depressing that the man who is considered college football’s best coach would disgrace himself with such a blatant lie. Kirby Smart, who makes over $13 million a year, was willing to show the world he was a liar over a … timeout?

Maybe we’ve reached a point in American society where lying is accepted and a successful lie is applauded. We have a president who is a pathological liar, and one of the two major parties in American politics supports and cheers his lies. If public and obvious lying is good enough for the president, why not for a guy who is basically a highly paid P.E. instructor at a public institution?

Role models do matter in any society. Why should a Georgia player who watched his coach pull off an embarrassing, very public lie ever feel the need to be honest with the coach or his University? If you can get away with taking illegal booster money – and even in the new NIL wild-West, there are still lines not to be crossed – go for it. If caught, follow your coach’s example and lie your ass off. Drinking underage and busted? Pull a Coach Smart and scream, “It was just a Coke, not a rum and Coke.”

Of course, it’s not exactly unusual for players to try to lie their way out of compromising situations. They are no different than the rest of us, but this is a moment when the sports world is obsessed with the concept of “accountability.” Not long ago, yelling at players was just what hardass coaches did. Now it’s been elevated to a sports management ethos of “accountability.” Just as players are no longer told to drink fluids but to “hydrate,” accountability is a more sophisticated expression of “do your job or your ass will get benched.” Nothing has changed; it just sounds better.

For the record, I’d hoped that Georgia would win. This weekend, they play my beloved Ole Miss Rebels, and the last time Georgia lost two consecutive regular-season games, Barack Obama was president. I’ve always found Auburn coach Hugh Freeze to be a little creepy around the edges, and wasn’t surprised when the coach, who often quotes Bible passages, was fired from Ole Miss after he was caught using his university-paid cell phone to call massage parlors on recruiting trips. (I mean, dude, get a burner.)

I love college football. Growing up in Mississippi, going to Ole Miss games was one of the ways my dad and I bonded. After the Romney campaign (we lost), I spent the 2013 football season going to all the Ole Miss games with my 95-year-old dad and mom. I wrote a book about the year, The Last Season: A Father, a Son and a Lifetime of College Football.

There has long been an underside to big-time college football, from secret payments to players to abuse of pain-killing drugs and financial exploitation of the athletes for the University’s benefit. Now, college athletes can make millions of dollars, and coaches tens of millions. It’s a billion-dollar industry, and maybe I’m naïve in thinking a basic value like honesty has any role in this marketplace.

Maybe. But I’d like to think a Kirby Smart might have some lingering sense of shame that gave him pause before humiliating himself with the farce of insisting a timeout hand sign was really clapping. Forget accountability, what about some sense of avoiding national embarrassment?

I can only hope that in the upcoming Ole Miss vs. In the Georgia game, Coach Smart will be frantically calling for a timeout, and the officials ignore him, assuming he’s just clapping. Now that’s a moment that I’d applaud.

---