Kirby Smart says Alabama 2010s teams would "go Clubber Lang" on today's teams

Not necessarily better or worse, just different. That's been my personal conclusion of how college football has changed in the portal-and-NIL era, and a recent interview with Kirby Smart summarizes that dynamic perfectly. 

"I tell people all the time, our best Alabama teams -- I'm gonna go 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 -- would beat the dog out of all these teams right now. They could practice different, and they were deeper. The game has not changed that much from 2012 to 2025 but the roster has, and those teams would Clubber Lang somebody. They would just physically beat you," Smart told Next Round Live. 

"I look at our team now and go, 'Oh God, we don't have the depth we had. We're not as good as we were.' And then we go out and win the SEC. It's relative. Relative, it's going down. There's not as much talent acquisition, not as much talent on a team to be able to develop and grow. You're playing younger players. I've got kids that would have never played at Georgia when I got there or at Alabama that are having to play now."

There's a lot to chew on there, but let's start here: Someone needs to tell Kirby that his own 2021 team was more talented than any of the vintage Saban Alabama teams. The 2021 Bulldogs had 45 players drafted, significantly above the 2015 Alabama roster, with nearly 15 percent more draft capital invested into the 2021 Bulldogs than the 2015 Tide. But I digress. 

The 2021 Bulldogs are actually a better comparison, because that was the last season without a fully operational NIL market shaping the sport. Both the 2021 and 2025 Bulldogs went a collective 8-1 in SEC play (with both losses coming to Bama), but the average '21 game ended in a 37.8-12.5 win for the Bulldogs (SEC games only). By 2025, the margin shrunk to 32.5-22.1. The average margin of victory in four years shrunk by nearly 60 percent, from 25.3 to 10.4. On the flip side, the worst team in the SEC in 2021 (0-8 Vanderbilt) lost its SEC games by an average score of 39.6-13.6. The worst SEC team in 2025 (0-8 Arkansas) lost by an average of 37.1-30.4. The margin of defeat shrunk from 26 to 6.7.

Add it all together, and the gulf between the SEC's best and worst teams in 2021 was 51.3 points per game. Four years later, it was 17.1. The distance between the conference's ceiling and its floor shrunk by exactly 66.7 percent in the span of one presidential term.

And so yes, today's teams are simply not able to acquire -- others would say hoard -- talent as they did in previous eras. Each December, the middle class of college football starts its Christmas shopping with the upper crusts's second string. Guys that would be sitting and waiting at Georgia, Alabama and Ohio State are now getting paid to play elsewhere. Smart would argue it would be better for those players' long-term development to wait their turn at Georgia than to chase an immediate pay day while settling for (in his view) worse coaching. Your milage may very there.

In the meantime, the SEC's best teams have gotten worse, and the worst teams have gotten better. The living room with 30-foot ceilings has shrunk to 10. 

Not better or worse, just different.