Ole Miss HC Lane Kiffin backs Kirby Smart as Georgia HC drops his verdict on CFB opt outs - “facts”

After his team's lopsided Orange Bowl win, Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart came forward to talk about the consequences of players opting out of bowl games. The Bulldogs, who lost the SEC Championship game to Alabama, leading to their exclusion from the playoffs, now have a consolation at hand as they dismantled ACC Champions Florida State 63-3 to emerge as bowl champions.

Following the game, Kirby Smart lamented to the press about how Florida State struggled in the game against them because of the massive numbers of opt-outs from their side and injuries to key players.

This led to Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin sharing Smart's words on social media and accompanying it with the caption:

"Facts"

In the post-game press conference, Smart talked about how people need to understand what happens when players opt out of non-playoff bowl games. He went on to say that Florida State is a good team, but the situation they find currently themselves in is unfortunate. The Seminoles were without 29 scholarship players including key offensive players.

"People need to see what happened tonight, and they need to fix this. It needs to be fixed. It needs to be fixed. It's very unfortunate that they have a a good football team and a good football program, and they're in the position they're in."

With this victory, Kirby Smart and his team finished their 2023 campaign with a 13-1 overall campaign. Despite their dreams of three-peating the national championship being shattered, the Bulldogs will be looking forward to making a comeback in 2024.

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Kirby Smart talks about non-playoff bowl games becoming scrimmage matches

The Georgia coach further went on to talk about the risk of non-playoff bowl games losing their importance and leading to more opt-outs in the coming days.

Despite the expanded playoffs being implemented next year, Kirby Smart felt that CFB has to decide their line of action to keep the relevance of non-playoff bowl games intact.

"You can say it's their fault and they have to solve their own problems. We had our guys, and they didn't have their guys. College football has to decide what they want. I know things are changing. But there's still going to be bowl games outside of those. People need to decided what they want and what they want to get out of it, because it's really unfortunate for those kids on that sideline that had to play in that game and didn't have their full arsenal. And it affected their game, 100%"

Orange Bowl Football

While the Georgia Bulldogs finish the season with a bowl win, this will definitely not satisfy their hunger for more national trophies. It will be interesting to see what Kirby Smart and his team can pull of in the next season of college football.