Kirby Smart recalls getting LSU coaching staff cussed out while interviewing with Nick Saban
After legendary college football coach Nick Saban retired, ESPN reached out to coaches around the country for their best Saban story. One coach ESPN spoke with was Georgia head coach Kirby Smart.
When Saban retired from Alabama, Smart was coaching a rival of the Crimson Tide’s in Georgia. But before that, he coached alongside Saban at both LSU and Alabama.
Smart told ESPN about a time when he got the LSU coaching staff cussed out when he was interviewing with the Tigers.
According to ESPN, it was 2004 and Smart was interviewing to be the defensive backs coach at LSU. Smart was working as a grad assistant at Florida State when he landed the interview with Saban and the Tigers.
Will Muschamp was the defensive coordinator at LSU at the time and reportedly put in a good word for Smart.
“I go on the interview, and I’m young and unassuming, and there are all these stories out there that if Miss Terry [Saban’s wife] invites you to the house for dinner, she had to give you the OK. And if you didn’t get the OK, then you weren’t going to get the job,” Kirby Smart told ESPN.
Smart spoke with Lance Thompson prior to his interview with Saban. Thompson was leaving the LSU staff and had previously told Smart what it’s like to work with Saban.
“Working for Nick is like dog years. Every year feels like seven,” Thompson told Smart, according to ESPN.
As Smart was in Baton Rouge for the interview, he got invited to Saban’s house. Things were going well for a while, but then…
“I was comfortable and feeling good about the way it was going, and I just say, ‘I don’t get it. People say working here is like dog years,'” Smart recalled. “I don’t know why in the hell I said that. Just dumb. Think about it. Why would you ever say something like that to an employer you’re trying to get a job with? But I did. I guess I wasn’t overwhelmed or intimated. I was too young to know any better.”
Saban might have played it off like he didn’t mind the comment at the time, but clearly he was upset.
Smart got a call from Muschamp the next day, who relayed that Saban wasn’t happy. Saban had “barked to everybody in the staff room,” according to ESPN.
“Which one of you dumbasses said it’s like dog years working for me? We’re trying to hire the guy, and you tell him that?” Smart told ESPN as far as what he was told Saban said. “I got the whole staff cussed out and somehow still got the job.”