Smart said at SEC media days. <\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThere\u2019s never been something that I asked our administration to do from a number to go to to get a player out of the portal or get a player in high school that they weren\u2019t willing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Georgia\u2019s relatively low rank in roster spending among championship contenders is somewhat surprising.<\/p>\n
Part of the reason Georgia\u2019s roster budget ranks near the middle of the SEC is Smart\u2019s conservative strategy adding players from the transfer portal last offseason.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs took on only nine players, while losing at SEC-low to the transfer portal.<\/p>\n
Smart had to spend money to retain players, both proven and unproven, but likely not as much as it would take to sign quality veteran players whose agents had power to leverage deals through the portal.<\/p>\n
Monroe Freeling, the most recent of the 21 first-round NFL draft picks (Carolina Panthers) Smart has produced, explained why players are willing to stay at less money than they could make by entering the portal and putting their talents up for bid.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think it\u2019s the culture of our program, you don\u2019t really come to Georgia if you\u2019re just trying to get paid,\u201d Freeling said at the 2026 NFL Combine.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou come to Georgia to get developed and go to the NFL.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smart believes in his players\u2019 development, and that\u2019s why he\u2019s taken the approach to retain the vast majority of his scholarship players with remaining eligibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look across the country, we\u2019ve done as good of a job as anybody of retaining our roster and not having to go wholesale into the portal,\u201d Smart said this fall. <\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026 We just keep thinking that if we pour into our guys, that our development is going to be better than taking a guy that\u2019s second, third, fourth year that somebody else developed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Georgia\u2019s veteran presence has led Smart to take a different approach through the first two games, as he\u2019s worked to develop the sort of depth that will be needed with the SEC moving to a nine-game league schedule this season.<\/p>\n
UGA has 34 players who have played at least three seasons for the Bulldogs, compared to last season\u2019s team, which had 25. <\/p>\n
While the football roster budgets might seem high to college football traditionalists still becoming accustomed to players getting paid, a look at UGA\u2019s finances explains the investment.<\/p>\n
Georgia\u2019s 2025 NCAA financial report revealed football generated $38.9 million of the school\u2019s $42.1 million in ticket revenue and took in $44.1 million of the $52.1 million in contributions.<\/p>\n
Smart has championed the need for football to continue funding other Olympic sports \u2014 which has led to three-straight Top 10 finish in the Learfield Director\u2019s Cup \u2014 as well as the spending on his own program.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what The Athletic reported, citing 70 unnamed sources consisting of general managers, personal directors, athletic directors and agents for independent, \u201ctrustworthy\u201d estimates of what programs are spending:<\/p>\n
SEC College Football Roster Spending:<\/p>\n
(Per The Athletic)<\/p>\n
Texas $45-$55 million <\/p>\n
LSU $47-50 million<\/p>\n
Texas A&M $45-50 million <\/p>\n
Ole Miss $39-$45 million<\/p>\n
Tennessee $41-$43 million<\/p>\n
Alabama $38-42 million<\/p>\n
Florida $31-41 million<\/p>\n
South Carolina $32-35 million<\/p>\n
Auburn $31-35 million <\/p>\n
Georgia $31-34 million<\/p>\n
Oklahoma $28-34 million <\/p>\n
Missouri $27-30 million <\/p>\n
Mississippi State $25-30 million<\/p>\n
Vanderbilt $25-$28 millio <\/p>\n
Kentucky $23-26 million<\/p>\n
Arkansas $22-25 million<\/p>\n
Other schools projected higher than UGA:<\/p>\n
Ohio State $49-54 million<\/p>\n
Oregon $48-54 million<\/p>\n
Miami $44-50 million <\/p>\n
Notre Dame $41-$48 million <\/p>\n
Texas Tech $38-$42 million<\/p>\n
Michigan $36-40 million<\/p>\n
Indiana $36-40 million<\/p>\n
Nebraska $31-35 million<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATHENS \u2014 Kirby Smart is doing more with less according to a recent story in The Athletic that\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,681,398,396,397,71959,99,241617,9224],"class_list":["post-851223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-georgia","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-season-opener","tag-sports","tag-tennessee-state","tag-uga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851223","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=851223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}