SEC commissioner Greg Sankey chimed in Monday on the sideline incident involving Georgia football coach Kirby Smart shoving a Mississippi State player.

“Coaches cannot make contact with an opposing player,” Sankey said in a statement emailed to the Athens Baner-Herald. “This play should have resulted in enforcement of an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. As Kirby discussed in his press conference today, he has appropriately reached out to Mississippi State head coach Jeff Lebby and quarterback Michael Van Buren. I am confident the contact was not intentional and the clear expectation is this conduct will not happen again.”

Smart made contact with Mississippi State quarterback Michael Van Buren late in Saturday’s 41-31 Georgia win. The coach said he was trying to reach defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann about personnel changes.

On Monday, Smart apologized for the incident.

“I went back and watched it, and didn’t even realize that I had run into him,” Smart said, per DawgNation. “But I reached out to (Mississippi State head coach Jeff) Lebby that night and talked to him, and he said the kid was great. And then yesterday, I talked to Mike and told him I had no intentions or ill will towards him at all. It was, if you’ve ever been on the sideline in a game, it’s pandemonium.

“It’s really pandemonium when you’re trying to change personnel and you only got three or four seconds to do it. And we were bad off in a bad personnel grouping against empty that we actually messed up the week before. And so I was trying to get to Schumann to get that changed.”

Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.