McElwain, Smart prepare for showdown
GAINESVILLE — In February 2008, Jim McElwain arrived in Alabama to help coach Nick Saban get the Crimson Tide back on track.
The welcoming committee included Kirby Smart, age 31 at the time and a firsttime Football Bowl Subdivision defensive coordinator.
During the next four years, Smart would help push McElwain and his offense to perform at a national championship level. Along the way, the two became friends, family even.
“I didn’t know anything about him before I got there,” McElwain recalled Monday. “And yet he was one of the first guys to welcome me in the door, which tells you what kind of guy he is. When you work together like that in an environment like that, you get to know each other pretty well. Our wives know each other.
“I mean, it becomes a family.”
McElwain and Smart’s relationship had a strong element of sibling rivalry, too.
On Saturday, the two men will reunite for the first time as head coaches when McElwain’s Florida Gators meet Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs. It will seem like old times for two coaches who famously and fiercely squared off during Alabama practices.
“There are times the offense really strongly dislikes the defense, and vice versa,” former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in July. “Those guys are both fiery. Mac and Kirby, as much as they respected and appreciated each other, our goal was to beat them and make them look bad.”
McElroy was Alabama’s starting quarterback in 2009, when the Tide won the national title two seasons after struggling to a 7-6 record during Saban’s first season.
With McElwain and Smart as coordinators from 2008-11, Alabama was 48-6 and won two national titles.
McElwain parlayed the success into his first head coaching job at Colorado State University. Smart would remain another four seasons and 50 wins, including two more national titles, before he landed his dream job at alma mater Georgia.
Smart, now 40, was a four-year letterman at Georgia and a first-team All-SEC selection as a senior in 1998. His 13 interceptions ranked fourth all-time for the Bulldogs.
Smart also was a fourtime member of the SEC Academic Honor Roll, earning a degree in finance.
“This will be a great chess match,” McElwain said.
Smart will have a good deal of familiarity with the Gators.
Besides four seasons with McElwain, Smart worked three seasons with UF defensive line coach Chris Rumph, two with offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier and one with quarterback Luke Del Rio, an Alabama walk-on in 2013.
Smart said he is keenly aware of McElwain’s and Nussmeier’s propensity for using shifts and motions — “trying to confuse people with eye candy,” Smart called it.
Yet Smart generally does not put much stock into previous relationships influencing a game’s outcome.
“I don’t know that it does provide advantage, because for every advantage I might have, they have the same,” he said. “I think you can overthink these things.
“We know what we do, and the players gotta go make the plays.”
Smart’s Bulldogs have not made enough plays lately.
Georgia (4-3, 2-3 SEC) enters Saturday’s matchup with No. 14 Florida (5-1, 3-1) having dropped three of four games — or the same number of combined losses he endured during his final two seasons at Alabama.
Smart and McElwain shared some incredible success under Saban. The two men now are on their own and at the center of one of college football’s biggest rivalries. Saturday’s winner is sure to carry away a little extra sense of satisfaction.
“We’ll get together and laugh about some stories, and that’s always fun,” McElwain said. “And yet it doesn’t matter. When you kind of blow the whistle, it’s your guys against their guys and see who comes out.”