By Cort Street | @cort_street

Sports Capital Journalism Program

NEW ORLEANS – A lot has changed in college football since Georgia head coach Kirby Smart last lifted the national championship trophy in California following the Bulldogs’ undefeated 2022 season. The transfer portal has created a type of free agency for athletes in college football; Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals have further complicated the nature of athletes’ relationships to schools; and conference realignment has prioritized schools’ brands and national exposure over the well-being of their student athletes in many ways.

But through all the chaos infecting the current landscape of the sport, one thing has remained the same: the Georgia Bulldogs are the standard of success in the College Football Playoff Era.

Entering the 2025 postseason, the Bulldogs have won seven bowl games in a row dating back to the 2019 Allstate Sugar Bowl. They have won at least 12 games in five of the last six eligible seasons (2020 COVID-shortened season excluded), and they have not lost more than two games in a regular season since 2016. The Bulldogs’ rise to the top has been undeniably correlated with the hire of Smart following the 2015 season. So how has he managed to maintain a level of consistent success in an era where seemingly nothing is guaranteed?

As the Bulldogs prepared to face Notre Dame in a College Football Playoff Quarterfinal in the Allstate Sugar Bowl as part of the expanded field, Smart attempted to answer that question. “A belief in our culture,” he said. “It’s as simple as keeping our players our players, staying connected. We believe we’re better together than we are apart. And we firmly believe as a coaching staff that if you stay in our organization for two, three years, you’re going to be a contributor and you’re going to win championships, because we want to keep the glue together.”

Retaining players has become more difficult than ever in the new age of college football, but Smart believes that developing athletes in the program and keeping them together is the key to sustaining championship-level success. According to the Bulldogs’ coach, this culture has been built not with the gimmicks and flashy deals that have become so prominent across the sport, but by simply creating a belief in players about the system that Georgia has in place.

The Georgia players provided evidence of this belief. “You come to a school for what it has to offer right now, with coaches, how it’s going to develop you,” tight end Oscar Delp said. “Everyone here loves Georgia and cares about this team and wants to be developed. It’s hard to persuade guys like that to go to other schools.”

“The way Coach Smart runs his program, he runs a disciplined, physical program,” offensive lineman Tate Ratledge added. “And I think physicality is never going to die in football.”

Players that have been in the program for three to four years have had the opportunity to experience the fruits of a championship culture early on in their time with the program. “Being a part of a national championship at a young age helped me see the vision and the standard for what it takes to reach this stage,” said junior linebacker Jalon Walker, a freshman during the 2022 championship season. “We want to pass on that vision to the younger players of what it really means to be here.”

From the players that are starring on Georgia’s 2024 roster, it is clear that Smart’s philosophy of creating a belief in the team’s culture among players has led to a long-term buy-in that many current programs are struggling to match. While Smart truly believes in this simple philosophy of culture building, he made sure to acknowledge that he is not incognizant of the current challenges of the sport.

“The glue staying together nowadays looks different than it used to,” he said. “A 98% retention rate was pretty normal ten years ago, and now 70% retention rate will probably get you in the top of the country.”

When speaking of the challenges, Smart emphasized the lack of depth that many teams are experiencing as a result of the transfer portal. “Nobody has as much depth in college football as they’ve had in previous years,” he said. “They never will again. There will never be a roster like the roster I got to coach at Alabama where we had three, four guys that were capable of playing. You had sophomore and junior offensive lineman that were waiting their turn to play, but they were NFL talent. That’s not going to exist because kids are going to be up and moving more often. And I think we have to get used to that norm, because that’s what it is.”

To his point, the Bulldogs lost several talented depth players in the 2023 portal cycle that saw 24 athletes transfer to other teams, according to 247Sports. Smart brought in 11 transfers to supplement his roster as a result of the losses, but out of those 11 players only running back Trevor Etienne has seen meaningful playing time in 2024.

While Smart asserted that he had no problems with using the transfer portal, he believed that his championship culture is derived from retaining and developing his players.

“I don’t know that the portal or NIL has any effect on development,” he said. “What affects that development is if more of your guys go in the portal, you’ve got less players to develop. …The people that stay put tend to develop better and get better as they go. And that’s kind of been the proof in the pudding for us. We haven’t been a huge portal team in terms of taking guys out of it. We like to develop our own roster and grow our own roster from within.”

With a run of championship success comes other organizations attempting to dethrone that success, but Smart stopped short of making any excuses. “I don’t think this year had anything to do with being more difficult because of past success,” he said. “I think everybody’s coming after you every year anyway.”

When the Bulldogs kick off their Sugar Bowl matchup on Wednesday night, they will be embarking on a journey to win their third national championship in four seasons. Another championship run would not only solidify the Georgia Bulldogs as the symbol of consistency in an era marred by chaos and uncertainty but would also substantiate Smart’s culture-building methods as the standard of success in college football. The Bulldogs have proven that they have what it takes to achieve championship glory. Now, they have a chance to prove themselves once again against the most demanding postseason in history in the 12-team College Football Playoff.