The saying goes, ‘There’s a grain of truth in every joke.’
That maxim rings true in the latest back-and-forth, dust-up, shots fired, whatever one wants to call it, between Georgia coach Kirby Smart and Oregon coach Dan Lanning, who in part was schooled by Smart when Lanning coached in Athens.
At SEC Media Days recently, Smart took the first jab at Lanning, all with what seemed like light-hearted humor.
“I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting Phil Knight and his wonderful wife, Penny,” Smart said. “I wish I could get some of that NIL money that he’s sharing with Dan Lanning.”
Later, in a follow-up question for Smart to expand on that shot taken at Lanning, Smart went further trying to prove his point saying Lanning has, “the treasure chest to open up and get whatever he wants.”
Smart playing the ‘woe is me’ angle doesn’t really play well. He’s not far removed from winning back-to-back national championships and Georgia is the best program in the country. Resources are hardly thin in Athens. It does seem like Georgia’s strategy in NIL is to sell the program and then pay up once kids actually sign and get on campus, not before. Others have different approaches.
Lanning has not held back, either. All the while keeping the tit-for-tat lighthearted and fun (for now) but also making it clear that the Ducks aren’t some Pacific Northwest backwater who won’t retaliate with a bazooka if needed.
“The rabbit has the gun,” Lanning told I-5corridor.com. “And people don’t like the fact that we’re able to go into gunfights with a gun as well.”
Oregon’s coach, who turned down Alabama to stay in Eugene following Nick Saban’s retirement, then cocked his Saturday-night special again on the Pat McAfee Show.
“It’s impressive that guys like Kirby have been signing the No. 1 class in the nation without any NIL money this entire time,” Lanning quipped.
“Coach Smart took a little shot at us. If you want to be a top-10 team in college football you better have great support. We have that.”
Maybe the feud ends here. But we’ve seen this before – high-level coaches battling over players, battling over who’s distributing money where and in the high stakes game of college football, especially now in the NIL era, every dollar matters. So does every ego.
Just a few years ago, then-Alabama coach Nick Saban derided then-Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher for NIL deals.
Miffed that the Aggies had the No. 1 class in 2022 over his Crimson Tide (how dare anyone but Alabama have the top class) Saban took to a Birmingham fundraiser and among other things said, “A&M bought every player on their team.”
Fisher would have none of it. At a press conference the next day, Fisher went in. Hard.
“Some people think they’re God,” Fisher said of Saban. “Go dig into how God did his deal. You may find out a lot of things you don’t want to know. We build him up to be the czar of football. Go dig into his past, or anybody that’s ever coached with him. You can find out anything you want to find out, what he does and how he does it. It’s despicable.”
According to an in-depth story in The Tuscaloosa News, despite public plaudits, Saban and Fisher didn’t really see eye-to-eye since their LSU coaching days. The pot of tension steamed over when Saban said NIL was the reason Texas A&M was recruiting so well. Of course money played a part but at that time in NIL, everything was still hush-hush.
Saban has since retired, surely the changing landscape of college football playing at least some role. Fisher was fired after going 45-25 in six seasons in College Station, moneyed players or not didn’t seem to matter.
By no means, is the Smart-Lanning back-and-forth even in the same ballpark as when Saban and Fisher went at it. Not yet, at least.
There’s a sliver of truth and gamesmanship in what Smart and Lanning said. All is fair in love and recruiting.
Both coaches chuckled about it. But Smart wants more NIL dough and Lanning wants those championship rings. Surely, they don’t see this as a laughing matter.
