There were some who were quite surprised when Kirby Smart hired Alabama strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran to be Georgia's new special teams coach.

However, according to Smart, it was an easy decision to make.

“Scott and I have had a relationship for a long time,” Smart said. “And just when I think of good coaches, I think of guys that can relate to players.”

Cochran - who will make $550,000 next year - can obviously do that.

Although the former Alabama assitant never served as an on-field coach, Smart said Cochran’s other qualities convinced him that he’d be successful.

“I’ve always judged a coach by two qualities: What is his ability to make players want to play for him?” Smart said. “His relationship, do players want to run through the brick wall for their coach? Do they respect their coach, do they want to play for their coach? Can he relate to them in a personal way and get them to do something that maybe another coach can’t? Does that separate him?”

That’s not all.

“Second is their ability to recruit. Both of those two things in my nine years at Alabama he was outstanding at,” Smart said. “He was always involved in some way, shape or form with special teams. That’s always been something, even dating back to my days at LSU. He was kind of the quality control guy at LSU that worked with special teams. So, his background has been around that.”

Smart also reminded the media, that although Cochran is the special teams coordinator, he won’t have to shoulder the burden all by himself.

Defensive coordinator Dan Lanning, inside linebackers coach Glenn Schumann, tight ends coach Todd Hartley, wide receiver coach Cortez Hankton, running backs coach Del McGee and defensive backs coach Warren Charlton have each held special teams duties in the past.

“This is not like Scott Cochran is the only special teams guy on our staff. We have an immense amount of knowledge and experience on special teams. They’ll draw on that,” Smart said. “Scott will be the special teams coordinator, but we'll use the entire staff to help with that. We've got quality control guys who do a great job coaching our coaches, and then I'm involved with special teams and I always have and I always will be because I think it's a really important part. A big part was just hiring Scott was because we felt like he brought a lot to the table in terms of the entire organization.”