Georgia’s Kirby Smart says football team’s speeding issues continue

Georgia’s Kirby Smart says football team’s speeding issues continue

Since Jan. 15, when Georgia offensive lineman Devin Willok and football staff member Chandler LeCroy were killed in a wreck that stemmed from LeCroy’s SUV racing former UGA defensive tackle Jalen Carter, Georgia football players have been involved in at least 11 moving traffic violations.

The most recent came on July 5, when Georgia freshman Samuel M’Pemba was ticketed for going 88 miles per hour in a 55 mph zone. About an hour later, Georgia senior Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint appeared in an Athens courtroom, where he pleaded guilty to driving 90 mph in a 45 mph zone — an incident that saw him spend an hour in jail in May.

With the clear trend in Athens, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart, on top of trying to defend a national championship, has also been tasked with addressing the speeding issue during the offseason.

And despite “constantly looking and searching” for solutions, Smart told reporters Tuesday that he’d yet to find any.

“I’ll be the first to admit we haven’t solved that issue or problem,” Smart said Tuesday. “I don’t honestly know that anybody has, but certainly for us, it’s important to acknowledge it first. We’ve had a lot of intervention in terms of talking and visiting, and discipline measures have been implemented in terms of education. We’ll continue to do that.”

In a March interview with ESPN, Smart said that he’d reached out to Athens-Clarke County Police, Georgia State Patrol and University of Georgia Police to educate the team on the dangers of speeding and racing.

With the help of law enforcement officials, Smart hoped to educate players on a “deeper level” about the cars some of them are driving.

While M’Pemba was driving a Dodge Durango at the time of his charge, Rosemy-Jacksaint was behind the wheel of a Dodge Charger.

“NIL has given some of our players — and players in general — the capacity to get probably faster [cars],” Smart said. “It’s not necessarily just the volume of the speeding tickets, it’s the speed of the speeding tickets. And that’s a bigger concern to me… the speed of the speeding tickets. Because high speeds, according to the Georgia State Patrol, which talked to our team, is where you get bigger accidents. That’s the biggest concern we have in regard to that.”

Players who have been issued speeding citations have been disciplined internally, Smart says.

“I wish that we could prevent speeding issues and learn from a horrific and tragic event,” Smart said. “I’m still wrestling with that, and we talk about it as a staff and all the things we can do. We’ve got issues with traffic citations and speeding issues that we have to improve on. We have to get better at those, and I’m constantly looking and searching for that.”