In the turbulent waters and rapidly changing tides of college football, the steadying hand of the game’s premier head coach is a brightly beckoning lighthouse of excellence and stability.

With the transfer portal, Name-Image-Likeness and all that has gone with it, excellence and stability might be the rarest of qualities in this day and age of college football. And it has all happened and changed mighty quickly.

Kirby Smart’s success and steadfast leadership at Georgia have been Gibraltar-like, keeping the Bulldogs amongst the elite during these fluctuating times. Always able to outwork and outrecruit – along with Nick Saban – all the competition, Smart and his staff assembled astoundingly talented rosters in Athens, and the Bulldogs won back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022, then finished 13-1, getting slighted from the playoffs in 2023. You just won’t see rosters like those Bulldog national championship teams, or Alabama from 2020, or that amazing 2019 LSU team, or the Florida championship squads assembled by Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer.

Between 2021 and 2023, the Bulldogs went 42-2. An incredible 36 of those 42 wins came by double-digit point differentials. Last season and midway through this 2025 campaign, most every game has come down to the wire. The margin of victory around the Southeastern Conference bears that out. It’s a lot like the NFL, almost every game is decided by a razor-thin margin. As for Georgia, think about the wins over Kentucky and the Yellow Jackets, and the loss to Alabama last year, the victories over Tennessee, Auburn and Ole Miss, and the loss to the Crimson Tide this season. One play. In any of them, and it sure could have been a different story.

But here Georgia is, reigning Southeastern Conference champions, involved in thriller after thriller, still in contention. This year, by the way, marks a ninth straight season that Georgia has gone to Jacksonville either once-beaten or undefeated. Smart’s Bulldogs have won seven of the last eight meetings with the Gators, and appeared in seven of the last eight Southeastern Conference Championship Games.

Billy Gonzales, longtime standout assistant, is the interim and will be the fourth different Florida head coach that Smart has squared off against.

It will likely be a very close game. Almost all of them are. The number of games in the league determined by exactly three points this season is eye-opening. Last year, Georgia scored late, got an interception and punched in a clincher to prevail 34-20 over the Gators in a tenacious battle. The win was the Bulldogs fourth straight over Florida, marking Georgia’s longest string of victories in the series since winning six in a row from 1978 through 1983. The scores of Georgia’s wins over Florida from ’21 to ’23 were 34-7, 42-20, and 43-20.

Flash back 30 years if you will, when Georgia and Florida played in Athens. That was the last time the old Gator Bowl was renovated. The next two years, the game will be played in Atlanta and Tampa. Back in 1994 and 1995, these two old foes played in Gainesville and Athens.

I was on the sidelines in my coat and tie for most of the 1994 game in Gainesville. It poured rain. The Florida student section was merciless as we were getting pounded. Ouch, Florida won 52-14.

So in 1995, it was 21-0 Gators Between the Hedges, less than six minutes into the first quarter.. The final score was Florida 52, Georgia 17. Spurrier famously asked if anyone had ever scored 50 against the Bulldogs in Athens, and the Gators punched one in late.

It was part of his vengeance for the Bulldogs’ 27-10 victory over undefeated Florida in his Heisman season of 1966. Georgia and Alabama shared the SEC title. Florida wouldn’t win its first until Spurrier’s second season at the helm of his alma mater in 1991.

Well, a young redshirt freshman defensive back named Kirby Smart was a part of that 1995 Georgia team. Two years later, he intercepted two passes in the Bulldogs’ 37-17 victory over Florida, which halted a seven-game losing streak to the Gators. It was Coach Spurrier’s lone loss in 12 meetings against the Bulldogs.

At the Tuesday press conference after the ’95 loss, a Georgia player was asked if he felt the team had made its mandated significant improvement. His response, sticking up for all involved with Georgia, was, “well last year it was 52-14, this year was 52-17, so I guess that’s better.” I remember thinking, oh man, at this pace, at that rate, in another decade and a half, we’ll have ‘em right where we want ‘em.

Winning seven of eight in Jacksonville someday in the future seemed something that could only be dreamed about.

So as the Bulldog faithful descend to the Golden Isles and north Florida one more time, before taking a two-year pause, this would be a good time to reflect – before sharpening those vocal chords for Saturday afternoon – on those ebbs and flows of history. And how that young redshirt freshman defensive back on that dark night in 1995, very similar to what Spurrier did for his, has delivered unparalleled glory to his beloved alma mater.