Reported Georgia Recruiting Budget a “Misnomer,” According to Kirby Smart

In a press conference on Tuesday, Kirby Smart challenged the accuracy of NCAA financial reports that indicate Georgia spent more on recruiting in 2022 than any of its peers in the SEC.

In his seven seasons as the Head Coach of the Georgia football program, Kirby Smart has elevated his alma mater to the very top of the college football food chain. While an amalgamation of factors have contributed to Georgia’s rise under Smart, perhaps no single element has factored more prominently in that rise than the remarkable surge in the program’s recruiting efforts that have been spearheaded by the Georgia head coach.

When Smart was given the keys to the Georgia program in December, 2015, he established in his introductory press conference that immediately upgrading the program’s recruiting efforts was one of his foremost priorities.

“I'm going from here to go out and start recruiting and use every minute I have of this contact period, in fact I'm ready to go right now to see some guys. I've got to go see them. I've only got so long to go see them and then it gets dead again and we go back to work on our bowl games and bowl preps. So we have a detailed list of people we're going to see and attack and see them one last time before it goes quiet again.”

Yet, while Smart’s profound understanding of the central role recruiting plays in elevating a program to the point that it consistently competes for championship has been evident from his earliest days on the job, his commitment to recruiting would not have yielded the exceptional results that it has - five SEC East division titles, two SEC titles, and consecutive national championships in seven seasons- without a corresponding commitment from the Georgia athletic administration. While Smart has been the driving force behind Georgia’s emergence as the reigning king of college football, the Georgia Athletic Department has been a willing partner that has opened up its purse strings to allow Smart to transform his vision into a reality.

According to NCAA financial reports obtained by USA Today, Georgia dedicated more than $4.5 million to football recruiting during the school’s 2022 fiscal year. That total led all SEC programs in football recruiting spending and outpaced Texas A&M, who finished No.2 in football recruiting spending, by more than $1.5 million. However, when the topic of Georgia’s football recruiting budget was brought up during Smart’s press conference at the SEC spring meetings in Sandestin, Florida on Tuesday, Smart challenged the accuracy of the recruiting budget numbers reported by USA Today.

"I think there's a little misnomer to that. You'd have to really study the numbers, and I don't know how much you guys dig into accounting methods, but we don't have a school plane; let's start with that,” Smart explained. “If somebody has a school plane, let's say they take 100 flights in that plane, they're not counting those 100 flights. We might make 100 flights that we purchase, so our recruiting numbers are imbalanced based on that.”

University of Georgia Football Head Coach Kirby Smart waves to students gathered at Benjamin High School to greet him during a recruiting visit on Wednesday, January 25, 2023, in Palm Beach Gardens, FL

However, while he might take issue with how the recruiting spending numbers are reported, Smart conceded that the Georgia athletic department does commit a significant sum of money to fund football recruiting.

“Do we spend on recruiting? Absolutely. Do the SEC schools spend on recruiting? Absolutely. Is it necessary to be competitive? It is. And our administration has been great about supporting us” Smart admitted. But the numbers that people put out, some of those are eye-popping, and catching where some people are counting their numbers a lot differently, especially with flights, which is our No. 1 expense.”

While Smart may well be correct in his assertion that the NCAA financial reports that detail the various amounts spent on recruiting by each school may not be entirely comprehensive in nature, the fact remains that Georgia’s recent ascent to the apex of the college football landscape has been fueled to a significant degree by the school’s financial and material commitment to recruiting. 

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