ATHENS, Ga. — Media members were invited for a few periods of Georgia’s first preseason practice Thursday, and something stark stood out. It wasn’t Kirby Smart’s always-entertaining comments into the microphone. It wasn’t the wealth of talent, including the former NBA prospect, 6-foot-11 Jah Jackson, towering over fellow offensive linemen.
What stood out the most was something new this season: how crowded it was on the practice field. The place was teeming with people who used to be prohibited from coaching in practice but are now free to do so.
So there was Jarvis Jones, a former All-America linebacker in an off-field role but very much on the field, imparting his vast knowledge. There was Montgomery VanGorder, a quality control coach for the offense, standing with the quarterbacks and moving things along. Several other quality control coaches were also on the field, chipping in when they saw the need.
It’s a whole new world, not just at Georgia but everywhere in college football.
“It changes everything,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said during his news conference before the team’s opening practice Thursday.
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In the old days, meaning before last week, the NCAA rules allowed only the head coach, the 10 assistant coaches and four graduate assistants to coach during practice. That didn’t used to be a huge deal, but then Nick Saban came along at Alabama and support staffs began to grow at a high level. Coaches who had been head coaches or coordinators at major programs were now quality coaches, able to advise off the field but not assist at practice.
Brent Venables is entering his third season as Oklahoma’s coach. (Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
There were plenty of instances of those rules being broken, at least away from the prying eyes of the media or the athletic department compliance staff. But coaches still had to be careful because rules are still rules. Now those rules are gone and practices look more like the NFL, where such limits don’t exist.
“It’s fantastic from a development standpoint in helping young coaches develop in the profession, getting opportunities, creating value for themselves, having experience through it,” Oklahoma coach Brett Venables said. “It does give you another lens and another set of eyes, and maybe, again, for you as a staff to be a little more efficient. And I think ultimately the players, if done the right way, will be benefactors of that.”
That was evident at Georgia’s first practice. Previously, only one or two coaches were with each position group, but Thursday, it seemed each position was flooded with staff members.
“We’ll use more coaches now and have the ability to maybe move some coaches around,” Smart said. “If you’ve got one drill going on, you’ve got another person that’s an allowable coach that maybe has really good experience coaching or knows our system to be an extra set of eyes, ears, and coach guys. So, we’re excited about that.”
The change makes it easier to make use of highly qualified coaches. When Kalen DeBoer went from Washington to Alabama, he took Chuck Morrell, his co-defensive coordinator at Washington, with him as an analyst. Thanks to the new rule, Morrell can participate in practice, along with every other analyst.
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“To have that luxury now with so many great coaches in our program, it’s an awesome thing,” DeBoer said.
One area that will benefit is special teams. Most programs have not had the special teams coordinator as one of their 10 on-field assistants. Georgia, for instance, has had Kirk Benedict, a former Duke special teams coordinator, in that role as a quality assistant coach. But under the old rules, Benedict was supposed to merely observe during practice while Smart and some of the coaches ran the special teams drills.
Now, Benedict and others like him can run the drills during practice. That frees up other assistants to work with players who aren’t involved in special teams.
“A guy can go over there and work on things he needs to work on and not lose time,” Smart said. “It’s helpful organizationally to do that.”
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A natural question is whether some of these jobs might go away, with athletic directors saying they’ll need to cut costs because of revenue sharing with athletes. Georgia, for instance, saw its operating expenses for the football program more than double over the past decade: $20.7 million in expenses per the June 2015 financial statement and $46.4 million per the June 2023 statement.
But Georgia’s football revenues in the same period went from around $50 million to $66 million, and that’s a conservative estimate that doesn’t include the SEC distribution (which went from $28 million to $55 million in the same period) or anything else, financial and otherwise, that comes with having a winning football program.
These quality control coaches also don’t tend to earn much (in coaching circles, at least). Even the big names tend to be recently fired from other programs and living well off buyouts. When Mike Bobo was an offensive analyst at Georgia during the 2022 season, he was paid $100,000 while still getting more than $1 million from Auburn. Georgia’s two main offensive analysts last year — Brandon Streeter (fired as Clemson’s offensive coordinator) and Darrell Dickey (fired as Texas A&M’s offensive coordinator) — were each paid $70,000 by Georgia.
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The bottom line is cutting these jobs wouldn’t make a huge dent, football is the cash cow, and athletic directors don’t want to risk losing any competitive edges there.
Plus, as Swinney pointed out, it’s not costing anything extra.
“We haven’t added staff, we have the same amount of staff that we’ve always had, but they just haven’t been able to coach on the field, within the rules,” Swinney said. “They’ve been able to do everything else — they can recruit, they can help the coaches support the coaches and game plan, that kind of stuff. But they were limited as far as practice. So what it’ll do, it will make you more efficient. It’ll create hopefully a little more scrutiny, a little more attention to details across the board. Because everybody can coach. Everybody’s got a voice.”
— The Athletic’s Sam Khan Jr. and Kennington Smith contributed to this report.
(Top photos of Kirby Smart, left, and Dabo Swinney: Mady Mertens, Ken Ruinard / USA Today)
