A matter of experience: Smart, Drinkwitz meet as longest-tenured SEC coaches

When Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz meet Saturday, they’ll make history from the sidelines. With plenty of experience under their belts, the coaches will face off as the two current longest-tenured SEC head coaches. While their paths to their current positions have looked different, neither lacks a winning resume. Excluding one season as a Miami Dolphins safeties coach, Smart has been part of an SEC coaching staff since 2004, claiming four national championships as Alabama’s defensive coordinator before winning two more in his sixth and seventh seasons at Georgia. Seven years younger than Smart, Drinkwitz was part of a national title-winning coaching staff just one year after Smart won as part of Alabama’s coaching staff, serving as a quality control coach for Auburn in 2010. But instead of his expertise echoing through SEC locker rooms Drinkwitz quickly built a name for himself at smaller programs, coaching at Arkansas State, Boise State and Appalachian State before being named the head coach of Missouri in December 2019. Still, Smart has by far been around the longest of all 16 SEC head coaches, taking over in Athens four seasons before Drinkwitz did at Missouri. The pair only recently claimed the title of the conference’s longest tenured coaches, as Mark Stoops, who began coaching Kentucky in 2013, was fired after last season. In Drinkwitz’s first year with the Tigers — the 2020 season which was shortened due to COVID-19 — he started a respectable 5-3 with all of his losses coming against ranked opponents. That was until December, when Missouri hosted Georgia in a game originally set to be played a month earlier. Smart and the Bulldogs showed no mercy, taking an early lead at Missouri’s Memorial Stadium, and a stretch of five consecutive drives ending in touchdowns powered Georgia to a 49-14 victory. Missouri and Georgia would meet in each of the next three seasons, with Drinkwitz’s Tigers failing to pick up a win over the Bulldogs. The last two, however, have been close. In a game that featured nine total made field goals and a Missouri lead most of the way, Georgia snuck away with a 26-22 win as visitors in 2022. Back in Athens the next year, the No. 12 Tigers once again held a second-half lead but, like the rest of Georgia’s regular season opponents that year, could not best the Bulldogs. Despite his 4-0 record over Drinkwitz, Smart has praised some of the former’s coaching philosophies. “[Drinkwitz] got a personality,” Smart said ahead of the 2023 matchup. “He doesn’t seem to stress and worry about things a lot … I’m trying to do the same myself when it comes to enjoying the moment.” With the pair meeting for the first time after a two-year hiatus, Drinkwitz in particular has a lot riding on this game. At 6-3, Missouri is clinging onto faint hope it can reach the College Football Playoff, surely in need of a second-ever win at Sanford Stadium. Meanwhile, Smart and the Bulldogs do not have much margin for error. Georgia’s big road win over Ole Miss last week kept it atop the SEC standings, but one more loss could endanger its quest for a third consecutive conference title. Success for the two coaches has looked different; for Smart, it’s competing on a yearly basis for national and conference championships, keeping Georgia the standard for what it means to dominate. It’s been all about program-building for Drinkwitz, who has left just about every school he’s coached at better than he found it, most recently turning Missouri from a school that was unranked throughout most of the late-2010s into one that has not missed a bowl game this decade. As Smart and Drinkwitz prepare for their fifth matchup, Saturday represents not just a battle between two highly experienced coaches, but a clash between a perennial SEC powerhouse and an opponent clawing its way toward the top.