It’s not the years. It’s the mileage. Those were the words spoken by Georgia coach Kirby Smart at SEC Media Days. That was his big message going into the preseason.

Did he actually mean miles per hour in the cars of his too fast and too furious football players? It’s a good thing fall camp is underway in college football. The streets might finally be safe again in Athens, Ga.

The Georgia Bulldogs are everyone’s pick to win the national championship in the first year after the retirement of former Alabama coach Nick Saban. The Bulldogs are 3-to-1 favorites. It’s then Ohio State (4-1), Oregon (8-1) and Texas (8-1), according to the sharps out in Las Vegas. Alabama (12-1) rounds out the top five.

For those wondering, Auburn is receiving 100-to-1 betting odds to shock the world.

Auburn continues to score big wins on the recruiting trail, but coach Hugh Freeze and his Tigers are probably a year or two away from competing for an SEC championship. The only thing standing in the way of Georgia winning it all in 2024 might be the team’s own toxic culture.

According to the Athens Banner-Herald, Georgia football players have received 29 citations for reckless driving, speeding or racing since the auto fatalities in 2023 of Georgia football player Devin Willock and staffer Chandler LeCroy.

It’s an embarrassment to the University to Georgia, the SEC and all of collegiate athletics.

What are Georgia football players doing with all of their NIL cash? Apparently paying a lot of speeding tickets.

What is going on at Georgia, and is Smart losing control of his team? At this point, it’s fair to question the coach’s ability to manage his players in this new age of pay-for-play. The lack of accountability and entitlement is glaring. Just look at the rap sheet.

No one is doubting the Bulldogs’ talent after only losing two games over the last three seasons. As for the culture inside the locker room, there are serious signs that things are beginning to unravel.

Most recently, player Rara Thomas was kicked off the team for allegations of cruelty to children and battery. It was his second arrest since transferring from Mississippi State to Georgia and those charges don’t even include his multiple offenses for speeding.

Smart kicked Thomas off the team last week. Georgia’s coach had no other choice. Will another Georgia football player be arrested before the start of the season? No one would be surprised.

Georgia opens up its season with Clemson and then its next big test comes in Week 4 at Alabama. The Bulldogs then play rival Auburn the very next week back at Sanford Stadium. That’s a tough stretch to begin the season. We’ll know by the beginning of October if Smart’s deterioration of the locker room has affected the standards on the football field.

Is Smart going to be the next Nick Saban of the SEC now that Saban is retired and working for ESPN? That’s what everyone has been asking this offseason. It’s the wrong question.

I’ve seen this story before in my years covering the SEC and Smart is beginning to look a lot more like another former SEC coach who won two national championships.

Smart isn’t Saban, but he might be the SEC’s next Urban Meyer if his team continues speeding down this road of lawlessness.

Meyer won a national championship with Florida in his second season (2006) and then again in his fourth (2008). Florida had one of the most talented teams in the history of the sport in 2009. Like Georgia this season, the Gators were easy favorites to win it all. The only thing that stopped UF in 2009 was the team’s toxic locker room culture, and it all came undone before the SEC championship game against Alabama.

A week before the game, future NFL defensive end Carlos Dunlap was arrested for a DUI near campus. Dunlap’s lapse in judgment wasn’t an outlier for the Gators. Meyer’s teams were notorious for their internal problems. In his six years at UF, Meyer saw 29 of his players arrested a total of 31 times.

Again, Georgia players have been hit with 29 citations for driving infractions since the auto fatalities of a player and a team staffer. Those deaths came hours after Georgia’s city-wide celebration of its 2023 national championship.

The lack of discipline on his teams contributed to Meyer’s downfall at Florida. He called it quits after that 2009 SEC championship game only to reverse that bizarre decision a couple days later. After the next season, Meyer walked away for good.

Florida now serves as a cautionary tale. Smart learned how to coach in the SEC from Saban, but tough lessons on survival in his league come by way of another coaching legend.

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Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the most controversial sports book ever written, “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”