The Georgia Bulldogs can’t seem to right the ship with bad off-the-field behavior from players.
Players have illegally brought weapons onto Georgia’s campus. They’ve gotten into bar fights and some have even been charged with domestic violence and sexual assault. Off-the-field problems have brought down coaches and programs in college football for years. Kirby Smart needs to be careful or he could be next.
This week, he acknowledged that he hasn’t yet solved the speeding issue that has plagued his team but that he is “constantly looking and searching” for ways to address it.
Just last week, freshman outside linebacker Samuel M’Pemba was ticketed for driving 88 miles per hour in a 55 mph zone. is incident came about an hour before Bulldogs receiver Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint made an appearance in court to plead guilty to driving 90 mph in a 45 mph zone.
The Bulldogs have at least 11 traffic-related moving violations since January 15th which started with offensive lineman Devin Willock and football staff member Chandler LeCroy being killed in a terrible wreck in which police allege LeCroy’s SUV was racing a car being driven by former Bulldogs defensive tackle Jalen Carter.
LeCroy had a blood alcohol concentration of .197% with the legal limit in Georgia being .08.
“I’ll be the first to admit we haven’t solved that issue or problem,” Smart told reporters during a news conference Tuesday. “I don’t honestly know that anybody has, but certainly for us, it’s important to acknowledge it first. We’ve had a lot of intervention in terms of talking and visiting, and discipline measures have been implemented in terms of education. We’ll continue to do that.”
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Smart said his program has attempted to educate players at a “deeper level” about the cars some of them are driving that are having them make terrible decisions. M’Pemba was driving a 2020 Dodge Durango while Rosemy-Jacksaint was driving a Dodge Charger.
Carter was driving a 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. He would go on to be selected by the Philadelphia Eagles in the first round after he plead no contest on March 16 to misdemeanor charges of reckless driving and racing. He was sentenced to 12 months of probation, a $1,000 fine, and 80 hours of community service and will attend a state-approved defensive driving course.
“NIL has given some of our players — and players in general — the capacity to get probably faster [cars],” Smart said. “It’s not necessarily just the volume of the speeding tickets, it’s the speed of the speeding tickets. And that’s a bigger concern to me — the speed of the speeding tickets. Because high speeds, according to the Georgia State Patrol, which talked to our team, is where you get bigger accidents. That’s the biggest concern we have in regard to that.”
“I wish that we could prevent speeding issues and learn from a horrific and tragic event,” Smart said. “I’m still wrestling with that, and we talk about it as a staff and all the things we can do. We’ve got issues with traffic citations and speeding issues that we have to improve on. We have to get better at those, and I’m constantly looking and searching for that.”
When it comes to the Bulldogs on the field, it’s a completely different story than what they’re going through off the field, as Smart’s team doesn’t seem to have any issues from kickoff to the final whistle. Georgia are entering the 2023 College Football season as the reigning national champions, having won it all in each of the past two seasons.
In 2021, Smart’s Bulldogs defeated SEC rival Alabama in the College Football Playoff championship game, 33-18. And they followed that up by trouncing TCU, 65-7, in last year’s final just six months ago.
