NASHVILLE—If Kirby Smart were as serious about discouraging dangerous driving as he is eradicating complacency, Georgia’s football offseason would have been more pleasant and less newsworthy.
The coach of the two-time national champion Bulldogs used the word “complacency” six times on the podium at Southeastern Conference media days Tuesday. He sounded as concerned about it as Joseph McCarthy was communism. Scary stuff.
“The threat for us is complacency,” Smart said. “The first thing you have to do is acknowledge that it’s a threat. Like if you acknowledge that complacency is a threat, it's the first step towards stomping it out.”
It sounds like complacency is keeping Smart up at night. What really should have been preoccupying his brain into the wee hours in recent months is the refusal of his players to slow down on the streets of Athens and surrounding areas.
This is a lesson that should have been emphatically learned from the fatal January car crash that killed Georgia player Devin Willock and staff member Chandler LeCroy. Yet it hasn’t sunk in, perhaps because Smart has done an ineffective job of pounding it home.
The details of the fatal crash in Athens early in the morning of Jan. 15 are terrifying and sobering: LeCroy was legally drunk while traveling in excess of 100 mph in a 40 mph zone on Barnett Shoals Road in a Ford Expedition belonging to Georgia Athletics, with Willock and others as passengers. She allegedly was engaged in a race with star defensive tackle Jalen Carter in his vehicle. LeCroy failed to negotiate a curve in the road, careened into light poles and trees, and finally came to rest against a unit of the Shoal Creek Apartments. There have subsequently been lawsuits filed by Willock’s father and one of the survivors of the crash.
“We love them and we miss them,” Smart said of Willock and LeCroy Tuesday. “One of the toughest things I’ve ever been through as a coach was to experience that.”
And yet, this terrible event produced no lasting disincentive to the Georgia football team. Street racing, speeding and driving under the influence issues have plagued the Bulldogs throughout 2023. Linebacker and leading tackler Jamon Dumas-Johnson was arrested for reckless driving five days before the fatal crash, in what appeared to be a street-racing episode. In the weeks that followed, receiver De’Nylon Morrissette was arrested for DUI after crashing into another car; receiver Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint pleaded guilty to speeding; freshman linebacker Samuel M’Pemba was arrested for driving 88 in a 55 mph zone; punter Brett Thorson was cited for following another car too closely after an accident; and Christen Miller was cited for failure to obey a red light.
In addition, ESPN.com reported separate incidents in February, March and April that led to complaint calls to Athens-Clarke County police that appeared to involve Georgia football players. That included two complaints about alleged street racing on the same road where LeCroy and Willock died.
Despite that galling pileup of problems, Smart and Georgia have applied no discernible major penalties. Discipline has been handled internally, with no public evidence of suspensions or dismissals from the team. Statements have been made, but on the whole the Bulldogs seem to be treating these incidents as no more consequential than missed tackles or dropped passes.
I asked Smart Tuesday if he is disappointed in the way his team has repeated the same behaviors that resulted in loss of life. His answer:
“I’m disappointed anytime we have traffic incidents. It’s very evident when you look at it, we’ve had traffic citations and incidents throughout the history of being at the University of Georgia. We actually don’t have more now than we’ve had in the past. What concerns me most is the safety of our players, and when you drive at high speeds it's unsafe. We don’t want that to happen. We’re going to do all we can to take that out and make sure that's eradicated.
“But I’m also smart enough to understand and know that 18- to 20-year olds is when this happens. It’s when it happened to me as a student-athlete. That’s when speeding happens. What we want to do is take that out and make it safe and not have high speeds. As long as they don’t get a speeding ticket, it should not be a super speeder.”
The problems with that answer are twofold: The behavior hasn’t been eradicated, so whatever efforts Georgia is undertaking aren’t working; and a kids-being-kids explanation fails to account for the tragic context. There have been memorial services and funerals to attend, but that doesn’t seem to resonate.
What often resonates with college athletes? Loss of playing time. Loss of a scholarship. Loss of a spot on the team. If significant action doesn’t accompany significant failures in accountability and citizenship, the message becomes quite clear: Keep winning and everything will be O.K.
Georgia is quite likely to keep winning, this season and well beyond that. If tolerating what should be an intolerable string of reckless driving situations is part of the winning formula, most fans of the program probably won’t care. But that’s a steep reputational price to pay.
