College coaches vote Georgia Bulldogs No. 1 to start the season

The fact Georgia is the preseason No. 1 team according to the USA Today/Coaches poll released Monday doesn’t come as a surprise.

But that doesn’t mean Kirby Smart or the Bulldogs will be taking the season for granted. Quite the contrary.

The way Smart sees it, there’s still a lot of improvement to gain and games to play before anyone–much less his own team–begins worrying about that.

“There’s a lot of things we can do better. We can play much better pass defense late in the season,” Smart said during SEC Media Days. “We can grow as a team and continue to get better on our special teams assets. It’s like a constant improvement for us. Better never rests.”

There are certainly plenty of voters who believe the Bulldogs have a very good shot.

Although the voting was not unanimous, see here, Georgia picked up 1,643 points in the voting compared to 1,510 for No. 2 Michigan with the Bulldogs pulling down 61 of the 66 first-place votes.

Alabama is the preseason No. 3, followed by Ohio State at No. 4 and LSU at No. 5.

The Bulldogs open their season on Sept. 2 against Tennessee Martin.

Smart said in Nashville that the Bulldogs won’t be worried about what others outside their own building may think.

“All we’re thinking about is the next 24 hours. Like how can we get better in the next 24 hours? I’m not sitting here thinking of some motivating factor. People are like, what are you going to tell your team this year?” he said. “We expect to be good at the University of Georgia. We want sustained success. So we have to do that by winning every day. That won’t change whether we win it or not this year.”

But the Bulldogs are certainly going to try.

Georgia holds its first scrimmage of the season on Saturday.

“The threat for us is complacency. The first thing you have to do is acknowledge that it’s a threat. If you acknowledge that complacency is a threat, it’s the first step toward stomping it out,” Smart said. “So, we look for two things when we look for people to join our organization. I’m not talking about players, I’m talking about anybody in our organization. Do they love football and do they embrace being part of something bigger than themselves? Are they selfless? We want to find people who love football and embrace a selfless role. Those two qualities, loving football and embracing being selfless, are not dependent on outcomes. They’re not dependent on win or loss, did I get a sack, did I touch the ball.”

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