Steve Sarkisian reveals his expectations of Kirby Smart-coached Georgia in Top 5 matchup
Steve Sarkisian Kirby Smart both cut their teeth under Nick Saban as part of the dynasty, and they'll lead their respective teams into battle in one of the biggest college football games in recent memory, with traveling to take on in Austin.
Ahead of the gigantic showdown, Sarkisian joined The Pat McAfee Show on Friday. He delivered some compliments to Smart, recognizing he'll have the Bulldogs ready to rock when they arrive for Saturday's clash.
"Kirby, the one thing I know is they're going to play great defense, and they're going to be intense, and they're going to play hard, they're going to be physical," Sarkisian stated. "They've recruited great. You know, Georgia really has been the standard of college football now, for about the last six or seven years. I think they've been to, you know, six, you know, SEC Championship Games, three National Championship Games.
"So, it is what it is. They're going to come in here, they're not going to be afraid of 105,000. They're going to come ready to play."
While Sarkisian and Smart have both been molded by their time in Tuscaloosa, the current Texas leader also utilizes what he's learned at his other stops, including his time under Pete Carroll while at USC, which he obviously values just as much as his prior stop in the SEC.
"I had been kind of raised by Pete Carroll," Sarkisian added, reminiscing about his coaching career. "So, there was this whole coaching style of Pete Carroll — the loose, the fun, but yet, driven, focused — he was a national champ, Super Bowl champ, and then I get with Nick Saban, and it's like, boom, we're going to operate like, in this box, and it's not very big, but what I learned is these guys coached to their personality, and who they were was naturally how they coached, and their teams took on their personality.
"So what I took out of it was, when I got this job here, was okay, who am I, and how do I want our team to be? So I think I've got a lot of Nick Saban in me, I think I've got a lot of Pete Carroll in me, and morphing those two things together for our team has been big."
It'll be a whirlwind to see Steve Sarkisian and Kirby Smart collide in Week 8, with a clash as big as Georgia at Texas adorning the screens of college football fans across the nation. The world anxiously awaits seeing who comes out on top in their showdown.
