Kirby Smart already has seen his Georgia team face transfer-quarterbacks in three of its first five games of the 2024 season, and there's another on tap this weekend as the No. 5 Bulldogs host Mississippi State.
That phenomenon is why Kirby Smart believes college football just might have more parity than at any time in the modern era.
Smart also is aware that both Vanderbilt and Arkansas utilized transfers at the quarterback position last weekend to spur their respective upsets against then-No.1. Alabama and No. 4 Tennessee.
"Here's what I'd say, and I don't know much about Vanderbilt and Arkansas because I haven't played either one of them, and I don't think we've even crossed paths. Well, maybe we did with Arkansas; we crossed tape on Auburn," Smart said on Wednesday's SEC coaches' teleconference. "But, they both got quarterbacks. And when you got a quarterback, you got a chance."
Smart sees the sport's most focal position as ushering in a greater leveling on the field of play via the NCAA Transfer Portal, which launched six years ago this month but has significantly boomed in popularity among student-athletes the past four years.
"With the Portal and the age of college football, anybody can get a quarterback, and it might be a niche quarterback," Smart said. "It might be like he's not going to be the greatest pro or he's not going to be the greatest.
"If he can make plays, and you can build your offense around him and create problems for the defense, there's anybody you can beat. You can beat anybody out there."
Diego Pavia and Taylen Green guided Vanderbilt's and Arkansas's respective wins after starting their careers at New Mexico State and Boise State, respectively; Cam Ward, on his third collegiate stop, kept alive Miami's unbeaten start with his late-game heroics last week at Cal.
The top three teams in this week's AP Top 25 -- Texas, Ohio State, Oregon -- all are led by transfer quarterbacks.
"I firmly believe that's the biggest change, is that's created the parity," Smart said. "Yeah, everybody's got less depth, but now everybody can go find a quarterback to build their team."
Smart says the Portal component, coupled with its overall impacts on depth -- or, perhaps quality depth -- makes it vastly more difficult for any program to climb its way to the top and remain in place.
"The hardest thing about it is the competition, the league; it's extremely tough," Smart said of life in the SEC. "I felt like in years past we had more depth, we had more people that could play. I felt that way in preseason camp, I sensed that we didn't have as much depth as we've had.
"And that has a lot to do with our competition, who play week in and week out. It just seems like it's gotten tougher, and the hardest part of staying on top is trying to stay ahead of everybody who's in constant pursuit of you."