College Football
Kirby Smart Complains About $20K NIL Payments: Is Georgia Losing Its Recruiting Edge?
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What Did Kirby Smart Say About NIL Payments?
Kirby Smart had a lot to say about NIL this week at the SEC spring meetings. He claimed some recruits are getting $20,000 per month just to stay committed, with repayment clauses if they back out. His tone wasn’t curious or even skeptical—it was annoyed, almost panicked.
He called the current state of NIL “unsustainable” and warned that a market correction was coming. He stopped short of naming names, but the frustration was aimed squarely at schools landing top recruits through aggressive NIL packages.
“Teams that are unusually good at recruiting right now are doing it,” Smart said. “Kids are getting money, but if you decommit, you owe that money back. These are high school kids getting money from an entity not d with the university but is a collective of the university.”
But is this just like the time Saban started sounding off about NIL and the portal, right before Alabama started slipping?
Kirby Smart Sounds Like Saban Right Before Alabama Slipped
There was a stretch when Kirby Smart ran recruiting the way Nick Saban ran it a decade earlier—control everything, win every five-star, develop them into pros, and hoard talent. That era might be ending.
This week’s NIL comments felt ripped from Saban’s final years. The tone, the complaint, the thinly veiled jealousy—it’s all familiar. Instead of adjusting to the way things are, Smart sounds like he’s trying to drag the sport back to the way things were.
That’s not how winning programs talk in 2025. They adjust, adapt, and outmaneuver the old heads who are stuck in 2018.
Is Georgia’s Recruiting Edge Starting to Fade?
Look at the signs. Georgia’s 2024 class was strong, but not dominant. Jackson Cantwell, a top 2026 target, flipped to Miami—a move Smart clearly didn’t take well. Other SEC programs are circling, and they’re not afraid to spend.
Smart used to be ahead of the curve. Now he’s trying to regulate it.
Publicly complaining about other programs’ NIL tactics doesn’t scream confidence. It sounds like a guy losing ground and looking for someone else to blame.
Kirby Smart Makes $13 Million a Year—Why Is He Complaining?
Here’s the part that’s hard to take seriously. Smart earns over $13 million per year as the highest-paid college football coach. And that number is growing.
And yet he’s upset that a teenager is making $250,000 a year to commit to a school?
If the market says a recruit is worth that, why is it a problem? Especially from a coach whose own program used to dominate because of massive resource advantages. Georgia didn’t complain about imbalance when it was facilities, staff budgets, or recruiting perks. NIL has just shifted the power slightly, and Smart doesn’t like it.
What This Says About the Future of Georgia Football
Smart sounds tired. Defensive. Stuck in a system that no longer works to his advantage. That’s exactly how Saban sounded when he started falling behind in the portal and NIL wars. The great ones don’t stay great just by doing the same thing longer—they pivot. Right now, Smart isn’t pivoting.
If he keeps this up, Georgia might not be the top dawg much longer.
