Georgia HC Kirby Smart Talks 'Disturbing' and 'Upsetting' Transfer Portal Trends

Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart has mastered current-day college football as a back-to-back national champion, but that doesn't mean he is a fan of every part of it.

The topic of the transfer portal and player movement was a prevalent one at SEC spring meetings on Tuesday, and Smart told reporters he believes third parties such as high school coaches initiating conversations that eventually lead to player movement is a problem.

"It's hard to police that," Smart said. "So, it's disturbing, it's upsetting, but I really don't know [what can be done]. People want to blame the coaches for tampering. But a lot of the time it is the player who is negotiating or is looking for greener pastures and when they do that, sometimes they create the tampering. It goes both ways."

Such a process would be a way to evade NCAA rules that prevent coaches from contacting players on other rosters about potentially leaving until they are officially in the transfer portal. Yet Smart pointed out such tampering existed before the portal even if it is easier and more prevalent in today's game.

He also said one side effect is the Georgia coaching staff spends more time on attempting to retain their own players and avoid losing them to the portal.

"We spend a lot of time on connection and having conversations [with players about], 'Where are you? Are happy with where you are? If you're not, what can we do to improve that and improve you as a player? Do you think you're being developed?'" Smart said.

It is part of the balancing act of a changing college football world.

Things such as human-level conversations between coaches and their current players like Smart mentioned and additional opportunities for players to capitalize on their value with name, image and likeness rules seem to be ushering the sport into a modern era.

However, there is also the reality of agents and others being more involved, as well as the possibility for confusion and inconsistency with different NIL rules from one state to the other.

Coaches may be concerned about tampering, but there also seems to be something of a begrudging acceptance that it is now part of the game since there isn't a lot of calling each other out by name for participating in the practice.

There may be more for Smart to navigate at this point, but the Bulldogs are on top of the college football world and primed to compete for another title during the upcoming campaign.