NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Sedrick Van Pran, Brock Bowers and their Georgia teammates might not know a fly-half from a hooker, but they still can recite the story of the New Zealand men’s rugby team.
“They do this thing called ‘sweeping the sheds’ and that means no job is too small to do right,” Bowers, the uber-talented tight end, said Tuesday as the Bulldogs took their turn behind the microphones at SEC Media Days. “That was kind of the main takeaway that we took from it.”
The All Blacks, the Kiwis’ world-dominating rugby squad, became a source of study for coach Kirby Smart and his team this offseason as they sought to glean lessons from a team that has defined consistent excellence in its sport. Part of their success, the Bulldogs learned, stemmed from having the humility and accountability to keep their locker room spotless – “sweeping the sheds.”
“That was coaches, captains, it didn’t matter who you were,” said Van Pran, Georgia’s two-year starter at center and team bellwether. “But primarily the leaders, per se, were the main guys that were like, Hey, we’re going to do this, we’re going to make sure this is tidy. Like, we’re good. And they kind of talked about when they stopped doing it is when they started to lose focus and they started to actually lose games.”
As a tumultuous and tragic offseason comes to an end in Athens, the Bulldogs’ appearance before the media at the Grand Hyatt Nashville brought home this point – Smart is highly concerned about complacent attitudes short-circuiting the Bulldogs’ pursuit of a historic third consecutive national championship.
He didn’t bemoan how brutal the schedule will be (nor should he have because it’s not). He did not lament having to replace 10 players selected in the NFL draft, including three first-rounders and quarterback Stetson Bennett; the roster again is stocked. (In his 30-minute news conference, he was asked once about the overarching story of the offseason, his players’ recklessness behind the wheel, which resulted in the deaths of team member Devin Willock and staff member Chandler LeCroy. Smart’s response was that he was disappointed with any traffic incident that “we’re going to do all we can to take that out and make sure that’s eradicated.”)
Rather, his concern for the season was that the Bulldogs’ shed could remain unswept, figuratively or otherwise. He brought it up unprompted in his opening remarks.
“The threat to us is complacency,” Smart said. “The first thing you have to do is acknowledge that it’s a threat. Like, if you acknowledge the complacency is a threat, it’s the first step towards stomping it out.”
Hence, the rugby lesson and the many slogans to chase away self-satisfaction (among them – “eat off the floor,” “it’s an honor, not a job” and “better never rests”).
“It’s exiting out all forms of complacency,” Van Pran said of the evocative slogan about dining off the ground. “It’s staying hungry, it’s making sure that you’re grinding.”
Addressing complacency and finding new ways to motivate players and coaches is a wise (and obvious) course for Smart, who last season pushed the message that his team would not be the hunted in its title defense, but the hunter.
But, as Smart has learned, sadly in the case of his challenges in curbing his players’ taste for aggressive driving, players are not always going to heed his instruction. Owning a pair of national championship rings won’t help their hearing, either.
It’s one of the many reasons why no team – not even the vaunted Crimson Tide of Alabama and Smart’s mentor Nick Saban – has been able to win three consecutive national championships since Minnesota in 1934-36, and why even winning two in a row has been a rarity.
Even Smart’s favorite rugby team was denied in its bid for a third consecutive Rugby World Cup, falling short in 2019.
Smart announced that his team will be motivated intrinsically.
“This team, the 2023 team, is still defining itself,” he said. “We don’t know where that goes. That happens over the course of the rest of the summer and fall camp, but I like where it’s at. I love the buy-in.”
Bowers and Van Pran fell in line with their coach.
“Jordan Davis isn’t putting on a jersey this year for Georgia; he’s not playing,” Van Pran said of the 2021 Outland Trophy-winning defensive tackle. “It’s just understanding that, yes, what those guys have accomplished is great, but this team has not accomplished anything.”
Said Bowers, “We can be satisfied with where we are right now or we can think about the future and what we want to accomplish this year.”
Tuesday’s answers were the right ones. But will the buy-in remain if the Bulldogs steamroll through the schedule, as they’re expected to, and are tempted to give something less than their best, whether in practice, in a game or elsewhere? Or, even earlier, can the Bulldogs summon the will to labor through the heat of preseason practice in August with appropriate vigor?
It might even take just one slip to derail the train. One consequence of a soft schedule, as noted Tuesday by ESPN analyst Heather Dinich, is that the Bulldogs could be kept out of the College Football Playoff if a) they were to lose at Tennessee on Nov. 18 and b) the Volunteers went on to win the SEC East and denied UGA the chance to redeem itself by winning the SEC championship. At that point, Georgia’s dainty slate could be held against it as the CFP selection committee selects its four semifinalists.
That, though, is a concern for months from now.
All Smart has to worry about now is convincing a group of young men with every reason to be fat and happy to pick up a broom and get to sweeping.
