Kirby Smart recalls how his first interview with Nick Saban got entire LSU staff cussed out
Before Kirby Smart was a two-time national champion at Georgia or even Nick Saban’s right-hand man at Alabama, he was a defensive backs coach under Saban at LSU in 2004.
It was the first big break in the industry for Smart, who was previously a graduate assistant at Florida State. But it seems that initial first interview for the job at LSU didn’t go without incident.
ESPN recently released a series of untold stories regarding Saban, and one regarded how Smart, when going for the job at LSU, accidentally got the Tigers’ whole staff in trouble during a visit to Saban’s home.
“I go on the interview, and I’m young and unassuming, and there are all these stories out there that if Miss Terry (Saban’s wife) invites you to the house for dinner, she had to give you the OK. And if you didn’t get the OK, then you weren’t going to get the job.”
Lance Thompson was leaving LSU to take the UCF defensive coordinator’s job. Smart remembers Thompson, who worked under Saban two different times, telling Smart in passing: “Working for Nick is like dog years. Every year feels like seven.”
It was at that point that Smart apparently got too confident and let Thompson’s comment slip.
“I was comfortable and feeling good about the way it was going, and I just say, ‘I don’t get it. People say working here is like dog years.’ I don’t know why in the hell I said that. Just dumb,” Smart said. “Think about it. Why would you ever say something like that to an employer you’re trying to get a job with? But I did. I guess I wasn’t overwhelmed or intimidated. I was too young to know any better.”
The next morning, Smart got a call from Muschamp after that day’s LSU staff meeting. Muschamp told Smart that an irate Saban barked to everybody in the staff room: “Which one of you dumb***** said it’s like dog years working for me? We’re trying to hire the guy, and you tell him that?”
Smart couldn’t believe he was still hired.
“I got the whole staff cussed out and somehow still got the job,” he said, per ESPN.
Smart returned to his alma mater when Saban left for the NFL, but he ultimately joined him in Miami in 2006 and remained under him until 2015, when he left to become the coach of the Bulldogs.
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