Kirby Smart, BBQ connoisseur, shares his recruiting trip supper strategy
Kirby Smart knows good barbecue. And he knows how to strategize a recruiting trip’s worth of meals.
Even if the coaches and assistants who coordinate it for him drop the ball.
Smart Joined the Crain & Company Podcast on Friday, and the show covered a lot of topics. But barbecue is one of my primary personality traits, and it’s late June.
So if I want to devote an article to barbecue and food, this seems like a good time to do it.
Kirby Smart on barbecue: ‘I’ve had it all’ (basically)
I’m interested in Kirby Smart’s barbecue preference here in Athens.
Kirby mentions Saucehouse, which I’ll admit, I haven’t tried yet. So I won’t criticize his omission of Pulaski Heights. Obviously, his time in Tuscaloosa means Dreamland receives a (much-deserved) shoutout.
“Man I love barbecue. The saddest part of that question is, I don’t know that I’ve ever had a bad barbecue place. If you’ve seen me eat or you’ve seen my physique, there’s not a lot of barbecue that I’ve missed. I will say, being born in Alabama the son of a coach, it always was pretty cool to go to Dreamland. I don’t want to discredit them. The first couple of times I went, I didn’t know that there was no menu. It’s just like, slab of ribs and white bread. I was dipping the sauce in the cup and eating the white bread,” Smart told the show.
“There’s some places in Athens that I really like. Saucehouse is really good. They do some catering for us. There’s some great barbecue places really all across the south. I always take the chance when I go recruiting to stop in the smallest most hole in the wall place and find a barbecue joint and stop by and get a great rib sandwich. I love to eat barbecue. It’s part of the south.”
I’d also recommend anyone in Athens as a resident or a visitor should check out Tamez for a different Houston barbecue taco vibe.
But what about when Smart can’t pick the BBQ joint? Like on recruiting trips?
Well, there’s a strategy for that.
Smart and his coaches can’t just dine and dash on big in-home visits. If there’s a spread, it’s polite to ask for seconds.
But not unlike offensive, defensive and special teams planning, timing is everything.
“I’ve got some great stories. That would be another podcast. The irony of that is, we schedule it so that I don’t have multiple dinners. When we go, we’re all in. We go for the whole dinner. It’s not like I do dinner here, here, here where I would have to pop in and pop out. That would be rude. So I’ve had a breakfast, lunch and a dinner, three in a day, but I’ve never had multiple dinners,” Smart said.
“I have had a few miscues by coaches where they fed me thinking we weren’t going to eat, and then I go in the home and now I’ve already had a Chick-fil-A spicy chicken and I go in there and she’s got her spread ready. I’m looking at the coach like, ‘Are you serious right now?'”
In the SEC, it just means more food. And if I were a coach, more naps.
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