Kirby Smart Shared His Message For Nick Saban After SEC Championship Game

In a recent conversation with ESPN.com, Georgia's Kiry Smart revealed his feelings on Nick Saban's future after falling to the Tide in last year's SEC Championship game...

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I just said, 'Look, I appreciate all you've done for me and my career. You're one of the best to ever do it, and I have immense respect for you.' And then I joked with him. 'You can't keep doing this much longer.'

I love the man. I appreciate all he's done, and I enjoyed competing against him. I wish he was still around, so that I could get some more shots at him because I hadn't done real well against him (1-5). We've had some really close games, some really great games. But, yeah, I wish he was still there.

... I think if I had never coached under him, I would probably be more frustrated because it would be like, 'Man, I never got to beat the GOAT as much as I wanted to' or whatever. But with him, there's so much respect having worked for him that I'm happy for him that he's chosen to do what he wants to do. He deserves to go out how he wanted to.

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(The Spun)