Kirby Smart Stays And Pat Fitzgerald Goes. It’s Rings, Money At Georgia Over Northwestern

While Georgia’s Kirby Smart made $11.25 million last season after leading his college football team to a second consecutive national championship, Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald pocketed $5.37 million after his third season in the past four years with three or fewer victories.

Huge difference.

Not only in salary, but in results.

So Fitzgerald got fired, and Kirby didn’t, which makes you wonder if we’re missing something here beyond the obvious.

First, consider the similarities. Kirby and Fitzgerald keep suggesting they are the new Sergeant Schultz. If you prefer not to Google
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that TV character from the 1960’s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes,” pay attention.

Kirby and Fitzgerald have graced their current universities just shy of forever. They were players, then assistant coaches and then in charge of the whole football operation, but they now say they know nothing — nothing! — about the craziness around their programs through the years.

And years.

And even more years.

According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11 players have remained on Smart’s Georgia squads during his eight seasons as Bulldogs head football coach, and that was despite women reporting “violent encounters” with those players to the police or to the university. The paper also mentioned 74 of Smart’s players have been cited for traveling 20 mph or more over the speed limit, including one of those situations leading to the death of Georgia offensive lineman Devin Willock and Chandler LeCroy, a recruiting staffer for the Bulldogs.

Now to Fitzgerald: According to The Daily Northwestern student newspaper, Wildcats players spent much of his 17 seasons as head football coach engaged in hazing and sexual abuse inside the Northwestern locker room.

The paper gave X-rated details.

Fitzgerald pleaded ignorance to everything. The same went for Smart regarding his off-the-field horrors at Georgia, and all of this is interesting since football coaches are notorious control freaks.

See “Hard Knocks.”

Even so, southern California had blizzard warnings this spring, which means anything is possible — like neither Smart nor Fitzpatrick knowing about stuff happening within the confines of their football programs beyond Johnny’s ability to block and tackle in the Red Zone.

Take it from Bill Curry, among the wisemen of professional and amateur athletics after nearly 50 years with teams. His football life stretched from playing for an Atlanta-area high school to Georgia Tech to NFL glory with Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers and Don Shula’s Baltimore Colts.

Later, Curry was off for head football coaching jobs at Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia State.

“If you’re not there on those teams, you don’t know,” said Curry, now retired at 80 in his native Atlanta, where we discussed Smart and Fitzgerald, both acquaintances of this always straightforward and engaging guy who also was Georgia State’s athletics director.

Curry paused, and then he added, “Everything from A to Z happens in locker rooms, and I’ve been in hundreds, literally hundreds of them, with some of the greatest coaches in the world, and with the least qualified coaches. And then I’ve been the coach when I was unqualified, and then when I had some idea about what I was doing. I’ve experienced most everything.

“The coach may know every detail about what’s going on in that locker room, and the coach may be totally oblivious. I’ve seen it both ways as a player, and I’ve had some horrible comeuppance as a coach when I found out something I didn’t know, and God almighty, it’s embarrassing.

“In college, you’re dealing with 105 teenaged males 24/7 365 days. Think about that now. What were we capable of doing as teenaged males?

“Anything.”

Yeah, but what about this?

Earlier this week, Smart called a miniature press conference at Georgia. He hinted to a small group of invited reporters that he really is Sergeant Schultz, but that he nevertheless is disciplining naughty players in the shadows.

Smart was surrounded by Georgia officials nodding nearby, which meant he isn’t going anywhere soon with the Bulldogs.

In contrast, after Northwestern officials suspended Fitzgerald for two weeks without pay Friday following an in-house investigation of the hazing and sexual abuse allegations, they fired him two days later when The Daily Northwestern discovered and printed more details.

If you didn’t know better, you’d say Fitzgerald was whacked since he was only the 19th highest-paid coach in the country last year after a 1-11 finish. You’d also say Kirby kept his job since he just managed another No.-1 ranked recruiting class in the nation as the highest-paid state employee in Georgia.

“It’s a fact of life that the degree of leniency is going to be directly related to the number of wins,” Curry said of the difference between Kirby and Fitzgerald in these situations. “Success is what’s required, and that’s success on the field and success off the field in the classroom. I don’t think that’s moral or immoral. It’s just simply a fact in the United States of America.”

Yep.