Kirby Smart is taking Nick Saban's media restrictions to new level

Published Mar. 31, 2016 3:50 p.m. ET

foxsports

Kirby Smart must not like the media.

As Nick Saban's defensive coordinator at Alabama, Smart only had to talk to the media once, maybe twice a year. The questions would always end up cursory, because you didn't want to scare Smart away. Most coordinators around the country talk to the media at least once a week, but Smart didn't have to do any of that at Alabama. It was good to work for Saban.

Smart doesn't work for Saban anymore, but he's still doing his best to avoid scrutiny.

Instead, he's invited more.

The Georgia legislature is keen to pass a bill that would include a change to the state's open records rules. The new rules would only apply to the state's public university athletic departments, and Smart played a significant role in the bill's creation.

Should the bill, which has been passed by the Georgia Senate and is expected to make it through the House of Representatives, be signed into law, athletic departments would have 90 days to respond to open records requests — 30 times longer than the previous requirement.

Oh, and the exorbitant fees the Georgia athletic department has charged for records — $18,000 for some emails — those aren't going away.

Why should you care? After all, this is only an issue for journalists covering those athletic departments. You would really only care if you're interested in things like truth.

Fighting transparency should always elicit suspicion, even if this legislation was only created to "level the playing field" with Alabama.

And whose idea was it? Well, that depends on who you ask.

The legislators responsible for passing it say it was Smart's idea, but he's running away from that.

"I shouldn't get any credit for that," Smart told reporters this week. "When I went over to the capitol, I was asked what's the difference in our program and some programs I've been at in the past. One of the things I brought up, there's a difference. And that was the extent of my conversation with those guys about that."

Smart, whether he admits it or not, has significant influence over a legislature who seems all-too-eager to pass laws to aid a college football team, which is why the open records law was able to sneak into a late-night legislative session.

So why is Kirby so interested in fending off Freedom of Information Act requests? He's not saying. He just wants to talk about football now, please.

But those new friends he has in the state house can say. According to the chief of staff of the senator who presented the bill in question, "It had to do with football teams or athletic departments that are recruiting people in [the] state of Georgia."

Ignore the fact that college coaches leak recruiting info to reporters constantly, or that social media has made following whims of a high school junior as easy as checking your phone, or the peculiarity that not a single recruiting reporter I know has ever opted to file a cumbersome, sometimes expensive open records request to find out the latest info on a five-star prospect — the Georgia state legislature and Kirby Smart certainly have.

So what's Kirby Smart trying to hide? No one knows, but it's going to take us a lot longer to find out now.