Earl Ehrhart says he only encountered Kirby Smart once, in March 2016, before Smart had coached a football game at Georgia. Perhaps then it should have been obvious the signs were already there that this Georgia football coach would play defense better than any Bulldogs coach before him. 

At the time, Ehrhart was the longest-tenured Republican in the Georgia House of Representatives. Smart had visited the capitol with university athletics department officials and been asked the differences between Georgia and other programs he was at previously. His answer convinced Ehrhart to introduce an 11th-hour amendment that changed the state’s open-records laws to conform with others in the SEC, most notably Alabama – where Smart had just worked under Nick Saban for nine seasons. 

Smart was strategic and calculated, "from the very beginning" of his tenure, said former Georgia athletics director Greg McGarity, who was in the room. This particular meeting wound up providing Georgia's athletics department and other public colleges in the state up to 90 business days to respond to open-records requests instead of three days.

Smart, when asked at the time, did not elaborate on how the amendment would help Georgia's football program. Ehrhart said it was meant to protect the identities of prospects the Bulldogs were recruiting. McGarity said it helped his overwhelmed staff, which handled open records requests made to the athletics department.

"I hope it brings us a national championship," then-Lieutenant Gov. Casey Cagle declared on the House floor. Several media reports declared it "Kirby's Law." Smart bristled at the nickname, calling it "ridiculous."

Smart “talked about that competitive advantage. It wasn’t about a lack of transparency. It was a competitive disadvantage across the board against all the other SEC schools,” Ehrhart recalled to USA TODAY Sports last month.

Eight years and two national titles later, the notion of Georgia taking a backseat to anybody in college football is almost laughable. Few operate quite like Smart and Georgia right now, with Alabama about the only team consistently standing in the Bulldogs' way anymore.

Smart has moved into Saban’s spot as the highest-paid college football coach in the country this year, according to USA TODAY Sports' annual analysis of coaches’ compensation released Wednesday. He is the first coach to earn more than $13 million in annual pay from a school after Georgia announced in May that it had extended his contract through 2033. It is about $2.5 million more than Smart made from the school in 2023 and is about $2 million more than what Clemson’s Dabo Swinney is set to make as the second-highest paid coach in the country (just over $11 million). It is the largest gap between the nation's two highest-paid coaches in terms of recurring annual compensation since USA TODAY Sports began its salary database in 2006.

The new contract was a reward for all the wins, and all the revenue generated, during a run Georgia president Jere Morehead called “the definition of excellence for all of college football,” in a statement announcing the deal.

Smart's compensation now dwarfs that of Kansas' Bill Self and Arkansas' John Calipari, who are the highest-paid men's basketball coaches in the country at $8.65 million and $8 million from their respective schools for the upcoming season. Smart would rank among the top 15 highest-paid CEOs in the state of Georgia, according to AFL-CIO figures from 2023. There were only six coaches in American professional sports in 2023 earning more than Smart will this season, Sportico reported last year.

But the optics — and rationale — have been complicated by a rash of traffic-related incidents of varying significance involving Georgia football players that continued into this season; recent graduation rates that are among the worst in the country; and the underlying question of what responsibility lies with a man who’s likely now the highest-paid public employee in the country. 

Kirby Smart and 'the cost of leadership' at Georgia

Smart has spoken about "the costs of leadership" before, and he mentioned the concept again when answering questions about the arrest of another Bulldogs football player earlier this month.

Junior wide receiver Colbie Young had been charged with battery and assault of an unborn child on Oct. 8 following an alleged altercation with Young's ex-girlfriend at his apartment. Smart announced the next day that Young would be indefinitely suspended until the legal matter was resolved. It came just two months after Smart dismissed wide receiver Rodarius "Rara" Thomas from the team after a second arrest for charges involving family violence.

Smart referred to potential domestic violence situations as, "the hardest thing you deal with when you deal with players and some of the decisions." But eventually it seemed as if he wasn't speaking about just one type of incident.

"When you have 130 17- to 23-year-olds, that’s, you’re going to have issues. It’s not going to be perfect and I certainly recognize we’ve got to do a better job," Smart said. "But it’s hard, it’s hard on our staff, because we got really good kids. We got really good people, man.

"You just want them to make better decisions as men off the field, and I take a lot of responsibility in that," he continued. "It’s tough, but that’s the cost of leadership. You’re going to be judged by the people you lead, and you got to stand up and face it, and do right by the kids and keep trying to find a better way.

"We’re constantly trying to find a better way to make a difference, and that’s in everything we do in our organization. That’s evaluation of the kids. That’s in the football side of it, becoming a man, the graduation, it’s all wrapped into one, and we’ve got to keep working on that.”

The price for Smart has never cost more.

Georgia put it right at the top of the news release in May. School officials wanted it known they were paying Smart more than anyone in college football. The designation, however, has only added to scrutiny on Smart as off-field headlines pile up. 

Georgia has had at least 30 arrests or citations for speeding, reckless driving or racing since a Jan. 15, 2023, crash that killed offensive lineman Devin Willock and recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy, according to the Athens Banner-Herald, a member of the USA TODAY Network. Police said LeCroy and former Georgia star Jalen Carter were racing at about 104 miles per hour. Victoria Bowles, a former Georgia recruiting staffer who was in the backseat of LeCroy's rented SUV, has since reached a settlement with the University of Georgia Athletic Association in which neither side was assigned blame. But a lawsuit against Carter from Bowles is still active. Carter was selected ninth overall in the June 2023 NFL draft by the Philadelphia Eagles.

Smart described the immediate aftermath of the incident at the emergency room as "probably one of the toughest moments I've ever experienced as a coach and a leader," when he first spoke to reporters about the crash in March 2023. Smart also insisted then that the program's culture was not a problem.

"Do kids make mistakes? Yes. Young student-athletes make mistakes. They do. It happens all across the country, it happens here," Smart said. "There’s no lack of control for our program. I think our kids will tell you across the board, we have an incredible culture here.”

In addition, the Georgia football team's latest NCAA Graduation Success Rate from last December was among the bottom 15 of about 5,800 Division I teams in any sport, according to NCAA data. It was the second-worst among the division's 260 football teams and the worst, by far, among the 130 Football Bowl Subdivision teams. The figures stem from six-year graduation rates that include players entering school between 2013 and 2016, which encompassed Mark Richt’s final three years as coach and Smart’s first year on the job.

The team's most recent figure is a new low point in three consecutive years of decline. And it came at a time when an athletics department staff list – obtained this summer by the USA TODAY Network – shows 21 employees in its Student Services unit, 17 of whom have the word "academic" or "learning" in their title. Georgia's most recent overall athletics Graduation Success Rate was more than double the football team's.

The dynamic, with Smart given two lucrative contract extensions since 2022, is fueling a perception that Georgia isn’t concerned about what’s happening behind the scenes so long as Smart is winning football games. 

“I think there’s a systematic problem there because we’ve seen so many of these incidents that are the exact same in nature. Why is it that there can’t be some sort of message or punishment from above that indicates to these players that this type of behavior is completely and totally unacceptable?” said Mark Nagel, the associate director of the College Sports Research Institute and a sports management professor at the University of South Carolina, which along with Georgia is a member of the Southeastern Conference.

“At a certain point, the benefits and the danger kind of conflict,” he added, “but that’s the leeway when you win and you win at a very high level. We look the other way.” 

The Georgia athletics department would not make Smart or athletic director Josh Brooks available for an interview with USA TODAY Sports for this story. Morehead, the university president, also declined a USA TODAY Sports interview request through a spokesperson. Multiple university faculty members with roles involving Georgia athletics also declined to speak about Smart and his program when reached by USA TODAY Sports.

Smart had to defend Georgia football's culture and disciplinary tactics for the second consecutive year at SEC Media Days in July, admitting the behavior by players was “disappointing” while insisting, “we do as much or more education than anybody in the country.” 

Smart said previously that the program has brought in numerous guests, including police officers from the UGA Police Department and Athens-Clarke County Police Department, to speak with players about the dangers of street racing. Georgia has also instituted what Smart termed "proactive" education for players, like defensive driving courses.

"This has got to be just one of the most frustrating things he’s ever had to deal with," said McGarity, who was Georgia's athletics director when Smart was hired and who retired in 2020. "There’s no excuse for it. There’s no justification for it. But even when I was there at Georgia … you had some sexual issues to deal with, you had guns and you had moving violations on these mopeds. It was like, c’mon. And the worst things were ones that rose to the level of felonies, or guns. It always seems like it’s something, and the severity of this is serious because of the tragedy."

Smart hasn’t been willing to discuss specific discipline, fearing it would “shame kids,” but Georgia running back Trevor Etienne did not play in the season opener against Clemson after a DUI arrest this summer in which he later pleaded no contest to reckless driving and guilty to charges of underage possession of alcohol, failure to maintain a lane and a window-tint violation. Smart has also mentioned fines to players levied by the school's name, image and likeness collective.

Since the season started, though, cornerback Daniel Harris became the latest player to be arrested for reckless driving, on Sept. 12. Harris was allegedly driving 106 miles per hour in a 65-mph area. He did not play in Georgia's next game at Kentucky, though he did travel with the team.

“We continue to have guys make poor decisions,” Smart told reporters last month in the aftermath of Harris' incident. “I know that our staff, myself, continue to drive home the sensitive nature of it. It’s certainly a deadly speed when you talk about the speed that he was traveling at. You want kids to grow up, you want to treat kids like your own kids, you want them to grow up and make good decisions and learn from their own mistakes. We had guys share, and we obviously continue to talk to them. But it hasn’t stopped it. So we’ve got to find a way to do it.”

Former Wyoming and North Dakota State football coach Craig Bohl, who now works as the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, pointed out that Smart is currently the co-chair of the NCAA Football Rules Committee and “cares about our game.” But he would only talk in general terms about how well Smart is or isn’t handling the issues Georgia football is confronting beyond gameday. 

“It was important for me to recognize that you had young men you’re working with, and young men are still in a maturing process, and some are faster than others,” Bohl said. “And so as a [former] coach, I’m always supportive of all the coaches’ decisions that they’re making and for doing what’s best for that young man and their program. As each coach sits in that chair, no one knows the challenges, no one understands the culture better than that coach.”

Why Kirby Smart is worth so much to Georgia

In so many ways, Smart is a Georgia football fairy tale. 

He’s the son of a Georgia high school football coach who then became an all-SEC defensive back and captain for the Bulldogs. He moved up the coaching ladder until he was essentially Saban’s deputy at Alabama, with his pick of head-coaching jobs. He waited until his alma mater came calling, immediately became Alabama’s top challenger in the SEC and eventually won back-to-back national championships.

The biggest impact, however, is that Smart "really transcended athletics at Georgia in a financial way," according to McGarity. The former athletics director pointed to recent improvements to the university's track and field, soccer and baseball facilities that have been executed or planned as proof of what Smart's success means. The school was able to fund those projects, as well as nearly $150 million in construction on the new football indoor practice facility and improvements to Sanford Stadium, because of how much money Smart brought in as a fundraiser through his big wins and his level of engagement with boosters.

"His level of success, the way he talked about his vision of success, and being a home-grown Georgia person, I think if you add all those things together, football kind of exploded," McGarity said. "All these facilities now are getting the attention that football just consumed, all that space during my time there. Because you had to get football going. Football had to be successful because, if it wasn’t, then all these other things probably aren’t happening due to financial concerns.”

Now, the university is doing everything it can to make sure Smart would never want to leave – or want for anything, really.   

Georgia was one of nine power conference schools to exceed what the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a college sports watchdog organization, dubbed the “crossover point” in a 2022 study. The threshold is applied to schools that are spending more on the salaries of their football head coach and 11 full-time assistant coaches than on athlete scholarships, medical expenses and financial aid for the entire athletics department. 

And that was before Smart became the nation’s highest-paid coach this spring. 

“So much about value now is tied to brand, and winning is so critically important to your brand value in athletics, and your athletics are so important to the overall brand of the university,” Nagel said, “that schools in many cases feel like, well, even if we haven’t done an exact mathematical equation and know exactly what Kirby Smart does for Georgia versus (what) another prominent coach might do for Georgia, the concern is why would we stop the train moving in a great direction on the field … There’s this huge worry of slipping from being a top-five or top-10 program, and that worry is driving a lot of this as well.”

The numbers can be staggering. 

Georgia, for instance, boasts 70 staff members designated as “Athletics-Football” or “Athletics-Football Nutrition“ this season on the staff listing obtained by the USA TODAY Network, up from 59 in 2023.

All told, Georgia is paying more than $29 million for just its football staff and, not adjusting for inflation, spent $20 million more on its football program in fiscal year 2023 than it did in fiscal year 2020, according to financial disclosure documents obtained by USA TODAY Sports. There were 106 Division I public schools that reported less than $29 million in total athletics operating expenses last year. Northern Illinois — the Mid-American Conference school that shocked Notre Dame in football this season — had $26.4 million in total operating expenses for its entire athletics department during fiscal year 2023.

Georgia, though, saw tremendous revenue growth from football under Smart. In former coach Richt's final season (2015), not adjusting for inflation, Georgia earned about $123.8 million in total operating revenue, including more than $28 million in ticket sales and $33 million in contributions. According to the most recent revenue filings obtained by USA TODAY Sports, Georgia had more than $210 million in total operating revenue, including more than $37 million in ticket sales and nearly $76 million in contributions.

“His salary is a reflection of his competency and his effort level, and where that sets – if he’s the highest-paid guy – so be it,” Bohl said about Smart. “But I believe he’s earning every nickel that he’s getting.” 

The Knight Commission’s study¹, conducted by financial services firm CliftonLarsonAllen, predicted that by 2032, nearly half of the 68 power-conference schools would reach the crossover point thanks to the increase in revenue tied to media rights, and in particular the additional money coming due to the expansion of the College Football Playoff over the next decade.

Knight Commission CEO Amy Privette Perko said these increased revenues have disproportionately benefited college football coaches and called the crossover point “a sign of a financially dysfunctional system.”

Former MLB CFO Jonathan Mariner, who also serves as a board member and co-chair of the finance committee at the Knight Foundation, wondered aloud if at some point, as the NCAA continues to seek antitrust legislation from Congress in order to regulate NIL benefits, “perhaps there’s some notion that if you want to pay a college coach the way professionals are paid, you no longer get the benefit of a not-for-profit exemption for the organization.”

The annual splurges on salaries and buyouts are par for the course at this point, even with the introduction of NIL benefits that have effectively allowed college athletes to be paid. The increase in coaches’ salaries isn't slowing down, particularly at the highest levels of college football.

This year, based on USA TODAY Sports’ analysis, there are 12 coaches making $9 million or more, up from six in 2022. In 2020, only one coach in the country made more than $9 million. Smart, meanwhile, has seen his salary grow from $3.75 million when he was first hired by Georgia in December 2015 to $13.28 million in just nine years.

Georgia, including this season, will have paid Smart more than $68 million in basic annual compensation since he took over the program, in addition to the $4.1 million buyout it had to give Richt. That's actually less money than SEC cohorts Alabama, LSU, Texas, Texas A&M and Florida are committed to pay in head-coach salaries and buyouts for those seasons.

"You may not like paying it, but in order to be fair to him, you want to be proactive. I think what Josh (Brooks) has done, the president, they’ve been proactive," said McGarity. "And so they see these numbers coming out, they appreciate what he’s done, and I promise you it’s not Kirby coming in there whining or something. That’s not the way he’s wired ... but you never want to take him for granted. You never want to take the attitude of, ‘Well, he’ll never leave. He never says anything about his salary.’ You want to treat him as a commodity, as someone there who is treasured, and has done remarkable work."

'Kirby Smart is to Georgia what Nick Saban was to Alabama'

Just don’t try to compare Smart to his old boss. Not to his face, anyway. 

Smart has been asked numerous times since Saban announced his retirement from coaching in January whether he considers himself Saban’s replacement as the face of the sport, and Smart can’t sidestep the question fast enough. That’s a title he doesn’t want, at least right now.

“I don’t think that’s some kind of a spot that’s inherited or given to anybody. You earn that. He earned that through time. I’m not where he was,” Smart told CBS Sports in March.Saban finished his 28-year career as a head coach with 292 wins and seven national championships, including six won over 17 seasons at Alabama.

Georgia football, however, is humming in a manner that makes the comparisons inevitable. The program has never won like it has under Smart, even during Vince Dooley’s legendary run. Smart’s .853 winning percentage is better than any of his predecessors. It’s better than Saban and just about any other FBS coach from this century other than Urban Meyer. About the only blemish is a 1-6 record against Alabama.

“Kirby’s surpassed about, well, everybody,” said Ehrhart, the former member of the Georgia House of Representatives. “Kirby Smart is to Georgia what Nick Saban was to Alabama. He’s taken a great program and taken it to a level that’s stratospheric.”

All these years later, Ehrhart hasn't encountered Smart again other than seeing him patrolling the sideline at a game. McGarity noted the Smart who met with legislators nine seasons ago "in no way went in there with an iron fist. At that point in time, it wasn't like he was the national championship coach."

“He has never utilized his bully pulpit, his fame and fortune and all that to press the legislature on anything other than one little thing 15 years ago,” Ehrhart emphasized. “I’d say that’s pretty good.”

But there is a bully pulpit to use when needed, and the mere acknowledgment of it is a nod to the power Smart wields, be it changing laws that could affect his program or changing the narrative forming around it.

So when the 2024 college football season began, once Georgia had confirmed its status as a top national championship contender again by blowing out Clemson, Smart was asked once more about the culture he’d molded at Georgia. He turned the question into a warning for those seeking to discredit what he's built. 

“What you know on the inside is a lot more than what people can paint pictures of on the outside,” Smart said. “People use it in negative recruiting and throw it out there, and it comes back to bite them, too.”

The highest-paid college football coach in the country was standing behind a podium playing defense yet again.

¹Beginning with the 2023 fiscal year, data were collected by the Knight Commission in partnership with Jodi Upton, Knight Chair in Data and Explanatory Journalism at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Between fiscal years 2016 and 2022, USA TODAY contributed to the data collection. Data prior to fiscal year 2016 were collected by Jodi Upton, then at USA TODAY Sports. Data are used with permission from USA TODAY. 

Contributing: Athens Banner-Herald reporter Marc Weiszer; John Heasly

Follow Mark Giannotto on social media @mgiannotto and email him at [email protected]. Follow Steve Berkowitz@ByBerkowitz and email him at [email protected].

This story was updated to add new information and update a graphic.