Kirby Smart Shares Strong Opinion On Congress, And How Players Should Be Paid

Kirby Smart has a plan for paying players through NIL, but it won’t go far without collective bargaining.

We could be days away from a judge in California approving the House settlement that will change college athletics once again. For Georgia’s Kirby Smart, his approach to NIL and how much players should make is pretty simple, at least in his eyes. 

While commissioners and athletic directors continue to lobby for congressional help when it comes to the rules that will govern this new system, the problem is that we are so far down the road that it’s hard to turn the car around and fix certain problems. 

One of those problems is where we are with NIL, and how this was never an endorsement situation.  It was more so a pay-for-play arrangement under the disguise of finding deals for athletes when they enroll at a particular school. 

In his eyes, Kirby Smart just wants what is fair for the older athletes that might have a name big enough to make money from a school, or is up on the pecking order that is actually benefits the roster as a whole when trying to decide on how much money each player is actually worth. 

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The problem is that the market is still fluctuating, with players signing for more money now than they did when NIL was first introduced. Also, with the pace at which Congress acts, the Georgia coach doesn’t see an easy solution on the horizon. 

“Very little has happened. It just shows you how hard it is to make changes and correct things, probably when they’re needed, because … people have talked about Congress. That’s not easy. Not a lot gets done quickly there and where we are right now,” Kirby Smart said to Paul Finebaum. “Like, I think every coach agrees we’re in a good place with being able to compensate players. Call it pay for play, call it NIL, I don’t care what you call it. 

“We’re all in a good place for that. We just want it to be in a way that’s sustainable. I just want to be able to have a freshman come in and not make more than a senior and I’d like for other sports to be able to still survive. You know, we’re on the brink of probably one to two years away from a lot of schools cutting sports. What’s the pushback going to be then when you start cutting non-revenue sports? I don’t want that to happen.”

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He makes a good point about cutting sports, and we are currently headed down a path of schools having to make tough decisions on how to save some of these programs. When the House settlement is approved, athletic departments will split roughly $20.6 million between the programs on each campus. Most of this money will go to football, from anywhere between $14 to $17 million, depending on what each school prioritizes. 

And let’s be honest, football is paying the bills on campus, especially when you add the television contracts to the equation. The comments from Kirby Smart come just a few days after high school prospect Jackson Cantwell agreed to play at Miami, with a contract reportedly around $2 to $2.5 million for his first season. 

I don’t see any problems with what Kirby Smart is saying, but to get to a place where you can have a pay-grade scale for players, you would need to setup a collective bargaining. And I don’t see that taking place any time soon. 

So for now, the Georgia head coach will have to continue attacking the NIL aspect of college athletics the same way he has since it was first started. 

And if he doesn’t want to match an opposing school’s offer, that’s his priority. Kirby Smart has won national titles doing things his way in the past, and I don’t see why that would stop any time soon.