A biography for Kirby Smarthasn’t been written yet.
“Our personalities are the not the same, Coach Saban and I. And I have the utmost respect for what he's done and what he's done for me and my family.”
“You've got to be diversified enough. That's the truth in the SEC and in college football.”
“I think you never leave what you learn.”
“I could finish my career being a defensive coordinator and say, 'Hey, he's Mickey Andrews.'”
“To be honest, it makes you a lot better coach when your boss is in the meeting room. You're a lot more driven every day.”
“Coach Saban's a great coach; he does it his way, and I have to do it my way. I have to cut my own cloth.”
“Welcome to the world we live in as coaches. You've got to figure out what you can do best and better to get these kids a chance to be successful. I think that comes through a lot of things - confidence, improvement, recruiting.”
“A lot of people think our standard is to be first in the SEC, be first in the country, first in our red zone, and run defense. We really don't go by that motto. We go by, 'Be the best Alabama defense there's been.'”
“It's never me against Saban, and I have too much respect for him to say that anyway. I never felt that way.”
“I don't believe in the coach-in-waiting thing. I don't think that works.”
“The only thing that matters with my kids are them graduating and playing well, and I try to do my dangedest to get them to play well.”
“It's very rare that Georgia and Alabama are the only two teams recruiting a kid.”
“I've got recruits that will text and call and do everything in the middle of the night. And I'm thinking, 'I'm with my family.' But you've got to dedicate time to that, or you can't do it.”
“At the end of the day, you have to go out on the grass and perform.”
“A team is a group of young men playing together. The program is the entirety of that.”
“It's a lot more important to get quality young men and good student-athletes that can be successful at the University of Georgia. That's my No. 1 goal.”
“I think the growth you get from working at a place like Alabama and with a program under Nick Saban, it helps me immensely.”