Georgia Football's Kirby Smart Voices Opinion on Extra Years of Eligibility

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart voiced his opinion on college players getting extra years of eligibility.

There has been a litany of college athletes over the years request extra years of eligibility. There has even been instances where players have been in college football for up to seven total years due to the global pandemic, medical redshirt and redshirt seasons allowing players to receive extra years of eligibility.

It has become a bit of a controversial topic and Georgia head coach Kirby Smart voiced his opinion on the subject. He would prefer to just give every player five years.

"I support the five-year plan; I think it cleans it up for a lot of people," said Smart during the weekly SEC Coaches' Teleconference on Wednesday. "I may not be the foremost authority, but I think I dig into it more than most. 

Smart went on to say that college coaches across all sports are having issues figuring our their roster numbers due to the lack of consistency with how many years of eligibility each player gets.

"We got (coaches) trying to sign people in other sports ...  and other teams are saying I don't know what my number is because of the redshirt rule. The five-year thing cleans it up."

Smart even went in on how schools are losing out on NIL money because of the redshirt rule and that if players didn't have to worry about losing a year if they don't redshirt, then it wouldn't be a problem.

"Now, football specifically, right now, there are coaches in our league who are in-between a kid who is saying, 'Well, I'm not playing enough, I'm gonna go ahead and just redshirt," Smart continued. "Well, No. 1, you're compensating that kid with NIL money and now you don't have the ability to use him. Well, what if you allow that kid to have five years and he knows there is five years."

In Smart's final remark on the topic, he discussed how coaches are dealing with depth issues on their roster, and the redshirt rule creates a level of doubt if a coach even has access to certain players. Eliminating the redshirt rule would eliminate all of that in his opinion.