Kirby Smart had a lot of cool, insightful and inspiring quotes from his time at SEC Media Days Tuesday morning.

When he came to Bainbridge a couple months ago, I latched onto one of the main points of his talk: You don’t have to be sick to get better. He said something similar Tuesday morning in front of a room full of journalists.

He was asked what he and the coaching staff have done in the offseason to improve.

“When you’re green you grow, when you’re ripe you rot,” said Kirby. “So we are always trying to stay green.”

What an awesome analogy! Kirby went on to say that the staff has traveled to many different programs to learn and absorb as much as they can to bring back to the Georgia football program.

One of the mission statements for the 2019 season at Georgia is “Do more.” The Dawgs have had plenty of success the past couple of seasons, but have come up just short in 2017 and 2018.

“We like it because we understand how close we’ve been to taking the next step,” said Kirby. “And although 24-5 the last two seasons is good, it’s not good enough. It’s not where we expect to be at the University of Georgia. Our mission is to bridge that gap, you know, by the actions we take, hence the word ‘do more,’ those words require action.”

Because of the close calls the last couple of seasons, and the back-to-back-to-back Top 3 recruiting classes, the pressure for the Dawgs to win a championship is huge.

“Pressure is a reflection of ambition,” said Kirby. “We put a lot of pressure on ourselves day in and day out. The stress and pressure we feel emanates from our building, from our coaches, from our players putting it on each other, from our university. We apply it every day.”

Kirby claimed to not be a big “quote” guy during the same interview session as all these quotes came from, but I think he puts together some great messages and metaphors.

I’m looking forward to what kind of metaphors he’ll have if he wins his first national championship as a head coach. Fingers are crossed that will happen this season.