Former Bama assistants Smart and McElwain to face off against one another

Kirby Smart didn’t know much about Jim McElwain when he agreed to join Alabama’s coaching staff as an offensive coordinator.

Smart was coming off of his first season with the Crimson Tide and received a promotion from secondary coach to defensive coordinator. The lone thing Smart knew about McElwain was that he coached under Bobby Petrino during his first stint at Louisville.

Otherwise, he didn’t much know about McElwain, who spent the 2007 season as the offensive coordinator at Fresno State. But his time out West sure impressed Alabama head coach Nick Saban to bring him on board, considering his offense averaged 420 yards per game in his only season with the Mountain West program.

It didn’t take long, however, for Smart to realize McElwain possessed a bright football mind.

"I thought he always did a great job of scheming people up, figuring out what he wanted to do to attack them," Smart said. "He always was very diversified and multiple in his formations. He had good players to use and did a good job using them. Anytime you’re an offensive coordinator and you create issues and problems for a defense it helps you. I always thought he did a nice job of that when we were together."

In four seasons as Alabama’s offensive coordinator, McElwain’s offenses averaged 407 yards per game, produced Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram in 2009 and helped lead the Crimson Tide to two national championships.

The success helped land him the head coaching job at Colorado State in 2012, to which he improved the Rams’ record in each of the three seasons he was there. That trial by fire ultimately got him the Florida job.

But McElwain was equally impressed with Smart when the two were on that Alabama staff. The two sat next to each other in the coaches’ meeting room and McElwain was able to get a close look as to how Smart approached the game as a defensive coach.

"His ability to see the game and put a plan together is really, really good," McElwain told the Florida media during the week. "Not only that but he’s got a great family. He’s got a wife, great kids. He’s a lot of fun to be around. I’m happy for him to have this opportunity, especially at a place that means so much to him, being how he played there. If you get a chance to grow up and do that, that’s pretty awesome and well deserved and long overdue."

Now, the two former colleagues will square off against one another Saturday when Georgia and Florida take on each other for the 95th time. This will be McElwain’s second time in the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party as he’s coming off a 27-3 win against the Bulldogs a year ago.

Smart is coaching in this game for the first time, although he played in it four times when he was in college in the mid-1990s. Smart went 1-3 against the Gators and recorded 22 tackles and two interceptions as a player. The two picks came in the 1997 game, which saw Georgia upset Florida 37-17.

Smart said it’s certainly an interesting dynamic that he’ll coach against someone who he used to be on the same staff with. But once the game kicks off, that fact won’t be on either coach’s mind.

"It’s a situation where he’s a good friend of mine who I know and have a lot of respect for, who I spent a lot of time with and won a lot of game alongside," Smart said. "So I have a lot of respect for the work he does. I know it’s important to him like it’s important to me. We’re just now against each other."

This story was originally published October 27, 2016 at 7:50 PM with the headline "Former Bama assistants Smart and McElwain to face off against one another."