Assume Nothing: What Georgia's new motto means to the Bulldogs

ATHENS, Ga. — You know what they say about assuming. “It makes a…” Need I say more? Georgia head coach Kirby Smart made an appearance Monday night in Macon to speak to the town’s Touchdown Club where he shared insight on his team’s new motto: “Assume Nothing.” It’s one that the Bulldogs are borrowing from Phil Knight and Nike after previously studying examples over time ranging from Netflix and Blockbuster to the New Zealand All Blacks rugby club.

“I didn’t choose it myself. I had some help. We get outside support with that, so I am not taking credit for that,” Smart said on Tuesday when asked about the motto. “I have a close relationship with Nike and Phil Knight, and I have been on a trip with him for six or seven consecutive years. I have so much respect for him and his wife and what he has done with business that I thought was really cool. When the opportunity came up to study his success, if you want to be successful, study successful people. They have certainly been that. That is really where that came from, outside sources.”

As for what the motto means, Smart said Monday that to him, it can be as simple as knowing the names of your teammates. He used the example of an early enrollee freshman asked to stand up in front of the team and name the players sitting in the front row of a team meeting recently. That player was only able to get about half, to which Smart told him, “Assuming nothing.”

“For us, assume nothing is as little as, do you know everyone on your team’s name?,” Smart said in Macon. “… When you meet someone, you repeat their name. You say their name. A name has history in it. Our players got up, each player, one at a time. We did it for three weeks and they told me their name. When you learn that about someone, you begin to connect to them. Connection is part of our DNA. So assume nothing.”

The desire to do without assumptions carries onto the field too. Georgia’s starting position at center is open after the departure of Sedrick Van Pran. Many are looking to Jared Wilson as the replacement, but you won’t find him assuming that, or anything as it pertains to playing his role as the man in the middle.

“At the center position, you can’t assume something’s going to happen. Everything happens in a split second, so if assume something’s going to happen then the complete opposite will end up happening,” Wilson said. “I feel like if you just go in with an open mindset, expect the bad, expect the good, try and feel everything that you can, you’ll be prepared for anything that’ll happen.”

“Assuming things doesn’t create the best outcomes for everybody,” linebacker Jalon Walker added. “For us studying Nike, we’re focusing on their longevity of being a great company. Here at the University of Georgia, we’re focusing on our longevity of having a successful football program. So watching and learning what they did over the years, that was just a model that we can follow.”

Ask another veteran linebacker like Chaz Chambliss what the phrase means, and he looks at it in terms of the outside expectations for UGA. The Bulldogs are the favorite according to Vegas oddsmakers to bring home a third title in four seasons and likely will start the 2024 campaign as the preseason top-ranked team. That’s what they were in all the way-too-early polls. That means nothing however, and Chambliss knows it.

“Going into the season not thinking about what happened in the past, not thinking about what happened in the SEC last year. Everybody’s saying, you know, this team can get three or whatever. It’s not about the past,” Chambliss said when asked what ‘assume nothing’ means to him, another example of the zero complacency approach that the Bulldogs have taken since winning the first of their back-to-back national championships in 2021. “Right now we’re just assuming that nothing is given to us, which we know we get everybody’s best. Just taking every single detail that you have and can take advantage of and not assuming that the person beside you knows what they’re doing and holding them accountable, too. It’s just paying attention to all the little details and not taking anything for granted.”

Georgia is four sessions in to spring practice, and the Bulldogs have 11 to go including a trio of scrimmages. Expect to hear the phrase several times out of Smart and company, but then again, assume nothing.