These are all pretty close to direct quotes. When I provide personal thoughts, I call it out. CKS was really damn good tonight. He does such a great job leading these young men. When I listen to him I'm reminded of a great lesson in leadership - it’s not about you - it’s about raising those up around you. I've put effort into not posting anything that I think would be detrimental to the team. CKS is so competitive, and he absolutely gets fired up talking about UF. He should. I love that about him. But I'm not willing to provide any locker room material for opposing fan bases.
Coach Smart defines exceptional leadership for me. I'm the CEO of a rapidly growing business that I founded. Been on the Bulldog 100 many times. He humbles me. Kirby is my model of an exceptional CEO. We're really lucky to have him.
Without further ado.....
Go Dawgs,
MOPAR
Coach Smart defines exceptional leadership for me. I'm the CEO of a rapidly growing business that I founded. Been on the Bulldog 100 many times. He humbles me. Kirby is my model of an exceptional CEO. We're really lucky to have him.
Without further ado.....
- All three portals have stepped up socially, in the classroom, and on the football field. They’ve all realized that. Know that the standard at Georgia is excellence, and if you can’t live up to that, you can’t be part of it.
- About the basketball reseating: "Change is inevitable. Growth is optional. We need some change in basketball. By all means, if changing the seats changes some things, I’m all for it."
- "You can imagine: first national title in 40 years. That’s a huge deal. Pretty special. What are you gonna do to combat the complacency that comes with that? The “I’ve arrived”. We call it EGO in our place. EGO stands for Edging God Out. If you have ego, you’re basically edging God out. We talked long and hard about that with our team. We have a really hungry team."
- "There’s a lot of things you can’t control. You can’t control getting the 4 seed and they happen to be the best team in the tournament. It's not something you control. I was upset. That’s not who I think we should play. My sports psychologist called me, and he said “Kirby, look at it this way. Would you rather have 30 days to prepare for the better team and play them at home, or would you rather have 10 days, and play them on the road? And I said “Good point”. There is perspective in everything."
- "We want to teach the culture of the organization, which is “no one is bigger than the team”. Playing for UGA is an honor, not a job." From me: He does a whole discussion about having the players write down the goals they had 3-4 years ago. Most realize that they’re living their dream right now.
- Offensive coordinator – “I can assure you, as much as I love coach Bobo, we’re gonna get after it this year. There’s nobody I’d bet on more than someone with a chip on their shoulder. I told you a long time ago: You need an edge. In the last 48 hours, I’ve seen our edge. And I’ve seen our kids reach out to me. Brock Bowers reaching out saying, “Coach, I can’t wait to play for you.’”
- "It’s not just the plays, not just the X’s and O’s, it's not just the players, it’s the edge."
- Smart: “I’m excited about the 12 team playoff. If we had it before, I think we’d have more national championships. There are a lot of questions to work out.”
- Not a direct quote, but a discussion about reducing the number of plays per game to reduce the impact of the longer season, injuries, etc.
- OU / Texas: “I’m excited as hell about bringing them in. I’ll be honest with you. I wish all the best teams could play under the same umbrella.”
- From me: Long chat about Darnell’s background and how special he is. He came from some really dark stuff. He was all in. Just know that. He’s a DGD. Root for him forever.
- The NIL landscape is scary, when you think about the money involved. He has to manage kids that come in with a large NIL deal, and he has starters on his roster that don’t have those kind of deals.
- Brock Bowers and Jalen Carter chose to not take any money from the collective, to make sure there were funds for the 60% “middle” of the team that don’t get bigger deals. From me: Those two boys are DGD’s. Those two boys were called out by CKS for being truly selfless. They make me proud to be a DAWG.
Go Dawgs,
MOPAR
