{"id":512181,"date":"2026-03-09T02:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T02:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/512181\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T02:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T02:39:08","slug":"greg-mcelroy-loves-kirby-smart-mario-cristobal-offseason-banter-it-felt-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/512181\/","title":{"rendered":"Greg McElroy loves Kirby Smart, Mario Cristobal offseason banter: \u2018It felt real\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

In February, Georgia<\/a>\u2018s Kirby Smart<\/a> and Miami<\/a>\u2018s Mario Cristobal<\/a> went viral for taking verbal jabs at one another at the annual Spurrier Awards in Gainesville, Florida. Smart jumpstarted the back-and-forth when he insinuated he wasn\u2019t comfortable with Cristobal sitting near Georgia cornerback\u00a0Ellis Johnson IV<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were talking about the 50th birthday party he got and the 50th birthday she got, and it wasn\u2019t quite the same, mama wins out,\u201d\u00a0Smart said<\/a>. \u201cWe probably sponsored that trip with all the NIL money we spent; that\u2019s a good, safe bet. That\u2019s OK, they deserve it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMario is right behind them. If it was up to him, he would have paid a lot more NIL money. It came down to us, too, so I don\u2019t like you being too close to Mario, you know what I\u2019m saying. He\u2019s still got another year left. You gotta be careful around Mario, sometimes he\u2019ll take your players.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cristobal didn\u2019t simply accept the dig. In fact, the Hurricanes\u2019 head man fired back with his own pointed comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great piece to watch what a player like\u00a0Carson Beck<\/a>\u00a0can do with great coaching,\u201d Cristobal said. \u201cNo, seriously, let\u2019s give it up for Kirby Smart. If wasn\u2019t for all his years of pre-NIL, we wouldn\u2019t have NIL right now.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 You gotta give a guy like Kirby credit. When you have all that time to sit at home watching us play on TV throughout the playoffs, when you don\u2019t take care of business\u2026 You know, congratulations on the SEC, the championship, that\u2019s awesome. We were 5-0 against the SEC, I don\u2019t know what you were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naturally, the verbal sparring match spread like wildfire online. While some fans claimed the coaches took their jokes too far, ESPN\u2019s Greg McElroy admitted he loved seeing the two coaches butt heads.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the banter. I thought it was human. It felt real,\u201d McElroy said<\/a>. \u201cA lot of these coaches now, because of how much money is at stake and what they have to represent, we get a robotic approach to gamesmanship.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 How many times did Lou Holtz take jabs at the competition? How often did we see Steve Spurrier take jabs at the competition? We never get that anymore. So, wasn\u2019t it kind of refreshing to see some back and forth. Granted, with humor; also, at the same time, a hint of truth as well. It was entertaining, and I hope we get more of it here in the weeks and months to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In February, Georgia\u2018s Kirby Smart and Miami\u2018s Mario Cristobal went viral for taking verbal jabs at one another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,129371,120881,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-512181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-kirby-smart-95-bainbridge","tag-mario-cristobal-88-columbus","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}