From the outside, it might not have looked like Kirby Smart was on the fast track to becoming part of college football royalty.
It was the early 2000s -- about 15 years ago -- and Smart was a just-above-grunt-level graduate assistant coach on the Florida State football staff. His monthly paycheck back then probably wouldn’t have covered an hour of his salary now at the University of Georgia.
But the Florida State defensive backs who played under him at the time say they are not the least bit surprised about how much success he has achieved since he left Tallahassee. Nor are they shocked that he has the Bulldogs in tonight’s national championship game -- in his second season as head coach.
“We knew he was going to be a very successful coach. You could tell he would be doing what he’s doing right now,” said Stanford Samuels Jr., who played his junior and senior years when Smart was serving as a graduate assistant under longtime defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews.
“I don’t know if he did it with other guys, but Kirby and I would have little sessions together, where we would talk about the game and watch film together. He looked at things as a chess master as opposed to just being a chess player.”
* For FSU secondary, two coaches should be better than one
Samuels and others who interacted with Smart at the time share one common thought: He arrived at Florida State with a purpose.
Smart actually came to FSU after spending one season as defensive backs coach and one season as defensive coordinator at Valdosta State University, which was a curious move to some. Why would a promising young coach leave a full-time coordinator’s job at a Division-II school to be a G.A. at a Division-I program?
But Smart, who was an All-SEC defensive back at Georgia, knew that he wanted to coach at the highest levels. And he figured the quickest way to get there would be learning directly from Andrews and also building relationships with Bobby Bowden and the other coaches on staff.
“He was ahead of the game for his age,” said Keith Cottrell, a former FSU punter who was serving as a student assistant on the Seminoles’ staff when Smart came to Tallahassee. “His preparation, his work ethic, his attention to detail, his ability to communicate with the players on the field … it was all ahead of where he stood in terms of his age.
“The thing that maybe impressed me most about Kirby was he was a proactive thinker. A lot of times coaches can be reactive. But Kirby was always a step ahead. It was incredible to see the things he picked up by watching film.”
Smart also was an immediate hit with FSU’s players.
“The thing I liked was he knew the game, and he was able to teach the game as a former player,” said Bryant McFadden, who also was starring in FSU’s defensive backfield at the time. “He was very instinctual, and he wanted to learn. You could see he always learning.”
Although he played safety at UGA, Smart coached cornerbacks at FSU because Andrews preferred to work with the safeties at that point of his career. Samuels credited that different perspective with helping him and the other cornerbacks understand the entire defense, instead of just their position.
And because he was only four or five years removed from his own playing days, Smart brought a different approach on the field than the fiery Andrews. He was intense and demanding, but not nearly as demonstrative.
“He was a good counter-balance to Andrews,” McFadden said with a laugh.
“The standard didn’t change, but he had a different way of holding you to the standard,” Samuels said. “It was not as in your face. But he knew how to get his point across.”
Smart’s decision to work at FSU paid off in a big way. He parlayed that experience, as well as a relationship with then-LSU defensive coordinator Will Muschamp, into a full-time gig coaching defensive backs for Nick Saban in 2004. When Saban left for the NFL’s Miami Dolphins one year later, Smart took an assistant’s position at Georgia in 2005 before joining Saban and the Dolphins in 2006.
He then went with Saban to Alabama in 2007 and the rest, as they say, is history. After a lengthy stint as Saban’s defensive coordinator, he was hired by his alma mater in December 2015 -- slightly more than a decade after he left FSU.
“Look at how Nick Saban trusted him,” McFadden said of the promise Smart showed as a young assistant. “He went to LSU, and a couple years later Saban took him to the Dolphins. We’re talking about football legends in Nick Saban and Mickey Andrews, and I know Andrews would have loved to have kept Kirby a lot longer.”
Even after Smart left Tallahassee, he and several of his former FSU players stayed in touch. Samuels said he reached out to Smart for career advice two or three times through the years, including when he took the head coaching position at Flanagan High in Hollywood, Fla.
Samuels also got to view Smart through a different lens when his son -- current Seminoles defensive back Stanford Samuels III -- started to emerge as a national prospect. Smart recruited the younger Samuels when he was at Alabama, and then continued pursuing him at Georgia.
“It was just like old times,” Samuels said, noting that he loved seeing Smart’s master’s degree from Florida State when they visited his office during a recruiting visit to Athens, Ga. “Seeing a Florida State degree on the wall was awesome.”
The younger Samuels eventually narrowed his three finalists to Georgia, Alabama and FSU before choosing the ‘Noles. Samuels Jr. said he left the decision to his son because he felt that he couldn’t make a poor choice: Florida State was in his heart, plus the ‘Noles were assembling a ton of young talent; Alabama had become the gold standard of college football; and Georgia had Smart.
“His final three schools were Florida State, Alabama and Georgia, and you knew all three had everything in place to be successful,” the elder Samuels said. “When we watched a practice at Georgia, you could just see it. You could see how the guys responded to the coaches. You could see it on the field. You could see they would be successful.
“It was the same feeling as our practices when he was out there with us. It was like watching that young G.A. running around — he still looked the same.”
So, when Georgia and Alabama square off tonight for the national championship, there will be a solid Florida State contingent pulling for the Dawgs.
“No question … I’m rolling with Kirby,” Samuels said with a laugh. “I’m rooting for the guy that has a Florida State degree on his wall.”
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Talk about this story with other Florida State football fans in the Tribal Council
