Kirby Smart on Nick Saban-Jimbo Fisher feud: 'You should be on the headphones sometimes'

DESTIN, Fla. — Kirby Smart’s cell phone blew up on that morning a couple of weeks ago when Jimbo Fisher stepped to the microphone at a hastily called press conference.

An SEC war of words pitting Fisher against his former boss Nick Saban was a very public fight between men Smart worked with on the same staff at LSU in 2004.

“I haven’t thought about it a day since,” the Georgia football coach insisted Tuesday at a podium at the SEC spring meetings at the Hilton Sandestin. “In the world that we operate in, you’re worried about what’s in front of you right now, which is the 15 recruits I’m trying to get on the phone, the conversations I’m trying to have. I’m not really worried about a feud between two guys that used to sit in the same staff meeting and have similar conversations. “

Smart spoke before going into a meeting room with all 14 head coaches who are assigned seats alphabetically by name of school.

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Fisher has said he didn’t return a phone call to Saban who reached out to him after his comments at an event in Alabama.

Fisher, Saban alleged, “bought every player on their team,” in Texas A&M's No. 1 ranked recruiting class through NIL deals. Fisher denied that, called Saban a narcissist and cast aspersions about how Saban operated his program as he piled up national championships at Alabama.

For his part on Tuesday, Saban said: “I didn’t say anybody did anything wrong. I’ve said everything I’m going to say about that.”

He said about NIL that he hopes “we can put some guardrails on all of this,” and bring some uniformity to players getting compensated for deals.

“I have no problem with Jimbo at all,” he said.

Saban and Fisher both were publicly reprimanded by SEC commissioner Greg Sankey. Fisher was conspicuously not among the coaches that came through for a morning press conference.

Smart worked with Saban for much of his assistant coaching life at Alabama and the Miami Dolphins as well.

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Smart and Fisher are two of Nick Saban’s coaching tree’s success stories. Both have won national titles and they are the only assistants who have beaten him.

“At the end of the day, things like that happen,” Smart said. “You guys should be on the headphones sometimes. You’d think that was a Mickey Mouse. It just so happened in front of everybody. It’s not something I prefer to comment on. I’m worried about what we do at Georgia and that’s my focus.”

Outside of meetings or on gamedays, Smart said he doesn’t speak to Saban or Fisher.

“They don’t call,” he said. “I don’t call them. There might be a conversation between a few guys, a few relationships when you’ve been on the staff with somebody. I talked to Will (Muschamp) when Will was the head coach some, but it’s not commonplace for guys to be reaching out to be friendly when you compete on the field and are constantly competing for prospects day in and day out. It’s not super unusual to me.”

When tensions are high, and uncertainties are high, people's emotions are strong,” Missouri coach Eliah Drinkwitz said. “I think that's what happened. We're all competitive. I look forward to the opportunity for all of us to discuss it.”

New Florida coach Billy Napier worked under Saban as an analyst and then an assistant coach.

“I’m not foolish enough to get caught commenting about that situation,” he said. “We’ll let those two gentlemen handle that. Both are competitors. Both have conviction about what they do. In this profession, there’s a lot of ways to skin a cat.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Georgia football's Kirby Smart reacts to Nick Saban, Jimbo Fisher feud