When a fire is at its hottest, what color does it burn?

Kirby Smart and his team confronted that question this spring. The query came from sports psychologist Drew Brannon of AMPLOS, who works closely with Smart and his staff.

The answer to the question is blue. This spring, as Smart searched for players who play with fire, passion, and energy, he decided to use that new knowledge to honor and motivate.

"We started the last two practices taking, they have a thing called a Guardian cap. It protects you from a concussion. We typically wear red guardian caps," Smart said at a meeting of the Georgia Bulldog Club. "We decided that we were going to have coaches pick three players that would have blue guardian caps because they had the most fire, passion and energy. And so we only did it for the last two practices."

The blue caps distinguished players who practiced with the fire Smart wanted (he declined to answer which players got the caps when asked by someone in the audience). But the new look also drew the attention of those who did not receive them.

"We left it kind of arbitrary. We didn't say what qualifies someone for that. When do they lose theirs? How did they get theirs? What are the measurements?" Smart said. "I must have had 60 players come up to me and say, Coach, how do I get one of those? How do I get those? We give you $120,000 a year and then you want a blue guardian cap?"

The fire, passion, and energy mantra has been thrown out often by Smart this spring. He mentioned it regularly during his handful of press conferences with reporters in March and April.

That phrase came up after he and Brannon met a few weeks after the up-and-down 2024 season ended. Both agreed that something didn't connect among Georgia's four "core DNA traits" - composure, connection, resiliency, and toughness - in 2024.

"(Brannon) said, we didn't have one kid on that team last year that had FPE. I said, what is FPE? He said, fire, passion, and energy," Smart said. "You can have those four other traits and you might not have fire, passion, and energy. What's missing across college football now is there’s a lot of complacency. There's a lot of apathy. There's a lot of getting a check whether I have fire, passion, and energy or not. I'm getting my $60,000 a year, my $120,000 a year. So why do I need to have fire, passion, and energy? Because I'm really doing a job. We say it's an honor, not a job. It's an honor to be at UGA. It's not a job. It's an honor. The minute you start thinking it's a job, you've lost all fire, passion, and energy."

But why do fire, passion, and energy matter? Smart and Brannon had that covered as well.

Brannon showed the team a depth chart of the 2024 team. Each side of the ball had about five small fires burning on the chart.

Then, Brannon pulled up a depth chart from Georgia's 2021 national championship team.

"He showed like 10 fires at the 11 positions, and on offense he showed 9 fires at the 11 positions," Smart said. "He said, what does this actually equal? And the kids were like, well some people said fire. That's like a big bonfire that's burning and everybody's got fire, passion and energy and that's really what we need. It was amazing how that hit our players to the heart and to the core to what we need to get where we want to go."

Smart admitted getting to the promised land won't be easy. Georgia is a young team that faces a daunting schedule, including home dates against Alabama and Texas and road trips to Auburn and Tennessee.

But Smart is hoping that a renewed focus on enthusiasm will take the Bulldogs farther in 2025.

"Undefeated is not the reality. But what's the reality is fire, passion and energy," Smart said. "If you have that, you have the best chance in the end of winning out and beating another team to hopefully bring another national championship our way. But I can tell you this, our kids are brought into that. I'm excited about it."