During No. 5 Georgia's win over Mississippi State on Saturday night, cameras caught Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart shoving MSU quarterback Michael Van Buren after a play took the Mississippi State quarterback to the opposing sideline.
As the video shows, Smart comes into frame shouting instructions to Georgia defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann when he makes contact with Van Buren. Smart's eyes remain on Schumann while his forearm collides with Van Buren and extends. It's an odd sequence all the way around, neither intentional nor incidental.
After the game, Smart confusingly recalled the situation while also claiming not to remember it.
"I think the play I was going after (Schumann); I was trying to get Schumann's attention," Smart said. "We were trying to change personnel; trying to get Schu's attention.
"But no, don't remember it."
— Dayne Young (@dayneyoung) October 12, 2024
Smart addressed the incident at his weekly press conference on Monday.
"After you guys said that in the press conference, I went back and watched it and didn't even realized I had run into him. But I reached out to (MSU head coach Jeff) Lebby that night and talked to him, and he said the kid was great," Smart said.
"Yesterday I talked to Mike and told him I had no intention or ill-will towards him at all. If you've ever been on the sideline during a game, it's pandemonium. It's really pandemonium when you're trying to change personnel and you've only got three to four seconds to do it. We were in a bad personnel grouping against empty, that we had actually messed up the week before. And so I was trying to get to (Glenn Schumann) to get that changed. I reached out to the kid. He was great. He's a really good player. Going to be a good player in this league and he played better as the game went on against us."
As stated above, it's an odd situation all around. The contact appeared to be incidental but, still, a head coach collided with an opposing player and the player was knocked a yard or more backward.
Clearly, Smart does not warrant a suspension or anything of the sort, but it will be interesting to see if the SEC has any comment on it.
Update: Here is a statement from SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, via The Athletic:
“Coaches cannot make contact with an opposing player. This play should have resulted in enforcement of an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. As Kirby discussed in his press conference today, he has appropriately reached out to Mississippi State head coach Jeff Lebby and quarterback Michael Van Buren. I am confident the contact was not intentional and the clear expectation is this conduct will not happen again.”
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.