Chris Hatfield remembers the first time he knew Kirby Smart would be a great coach.
Hatcher used up most of his salary pool for assistants before he hired a secondary coach for his first staff. Will Muschamp told them to use their last $8,000 to hire someone that he was comfortable with.
Muschamp reached out to Smart, who had played with him as a defensive back at Georgia. Three people jumped out to Hatcher.
Hatcher said that he knew who Kirby was because he was the quarterback coach at Kentucky for Tim Couch. Will and I decided that it would be better for Kirby to come down, put the suit on and interview, because we had enough money to do it.
He asked his new candidate to diagram the Georgia base defense that Kirby had run as a player.
Hatcher said that the man drew up the diagrams and backed up. If you play with 11 men, you have a better chance of stopping them.
Smart apologized after leaving a player off. Hatcher is aware that Muschamp tells the story with 12 men rather than 10. Hatcher insists that he remembers how Kirby was off by one guy.
Hatcher said that if he played with 11 he wouldn't know what to do.
Georgia will play for the College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday night and Smart will need all 11. He's one of the people who teach the Air Raid offense to the Frogs.
Hatcher lived with both Smart and Dykes for five years from 1997 to 2002. After landing a head-coaching job at his alma mater, Hatcher hired Smart and Muschamp to their first jobs, where they worked with him.
He is the only one who can say he built lockers with Smart and sold pizzas with him.
Hatcher said that they are both very different ways. Sonny has a good sense of humor. Kirby is capable of talking with the best of them.
He was at Kentucky a few months before the man. He was a star quarterback at Valdosta, where he won the Harlon Hill Award.
He was ready to hit the ground running when he got the job. He was young, single and broke, and he was considering leaving coaching because of it. He was told by his dad to call Mumme.
When a graduate assistant spot opened up, he showed up a few months later. He and Hatcher were both homeless. Hatcher said he'd once seen Spike speak at a clinic and he was enamored. He wanted to meet the younger Dykes.
They didn't have a lot of money or furniture. Hatcher said that when they were working as football camp staffers, they bought mattresses from a flea market.
Hatcher was in charge of the camp. When Tubby Smith was having his basketball camps in the same time as other sports like volleyball, there were thousands of hungry kids in the dorms.
Hatcher said thatSonny worked hard and was a hustler. My dad sold me an '84 Ford Ranger five-speed for $1 when I was in high school. He suggested that instead of selling pizzas to the football campers, we should just park your truck in the middle of the quad and sell pizza.
He portrayed himself as a smart businessman.
He said there were eight slices in there. We made them a lot of money. We would sell the whole pizza for $10 if you paid $1 a slice.
Hatcher mentioned that he had a South Georgia education. There was a deal on the price. Sonny came up with that idea.
They were going to go door to door in the dorms and sell the rest.
Hatcher was rolling in the dough. You would have thought we were rich. Back in the day, straight cash money was available.
Hatcher remembers that an old storage room was "nasty, with blocking dummies probably from when Bear Bryant coached there" and that they bought desks from a surplus store.
Hatcher said they were living the good life. We did all the grunt work, but we didn't have the same amount of pressure as a game. We were able to get it back there. The volunteers and student assistants felt like they owed us because we had our own offices. Back then, we were large.
After a year at Oklahoma, Mike LEACH got the Texas Tech head-coaching job and brought Sonny with him. Smart was once again back to coaching with 11 players after Hatcher landed his own head-coaching job.
There was an issue that needed to be addressed.
The locker room was depressing. Valdosta State was not in the facilities competition. It was up to the football staff to figure it out.
Hatcher said that a man donated some wood. A coach and his father were carpenters. Everybody had their own job when we did the assembly-line style.
He said that Smart was important.
The finished product had to be painted high-gloss to make it shiny. Kirby was the high-gloss guy.
Smart and Muschamp have fiery temperaments. When the three of them were young, they would do anything to win, especially basketball.
Muschamp could be fired up by smart pokes and pokes. Hatcher said that he was able to back it up on the court.
Smart got so angry that he fired the basketball off the wall and walked out. Hatcher said they didn't see him for the rest of the day so they had a good time together.
They worked hard as well. Muschamp used to paint stripes on the field on Sundays in order to get ready for practice before he joined LSU. After only one year as a coach, Smart became the defensive coordinators with a huge raise.
Valdosta had the best defense in the country that year. The Division II national championship game was one of the defeats.
Muschamp, who has been a head coach at Florida and South Carolina, is an assistant for Smart as the Dawgs attempt to win a second title.
Hatcher told the young coaches there was no job too small. We had to do these back in the day. The field and lockers used to be painted by the two coaches from the same staff.
Both Dyson and Smart say they learned a lot when working for Hatcher, who is 172-95 in 24 years as a head coach. He led the team to its first conference title in 76 years.
Smart said that he learned from Hatcher how to use his charisma and form strong relationships.
He was always confident with the team. He believed we could win all of the games. He was the embodiment of that. He was willing to accept that. The players love playing for him.
At SEC media days, Smart was asked about his time with Hatcher.
He smiled and asked, "How long you got?" I took a 20 hour bus ride to Arkadelphia. I'm able to tell you about Texarkana. I could tell you where I went in Mississippi. As a coach, I cut my teeth at that location. There were a lot of bus rides. Our lockers were built by us.
I learned a lot while working at the school. You don't learn anything by trial and error. I appreciate that Hatcher gave me that chance.
The lessons he learned from Hatcher are important this week as he attempts to take on an incredibly talented Georgia team. Hatcher convinced him that Kentucky could ever take on the top of the SEC, even though he was skeptical.
I didn't know anything about the Air Raid. Chris was the one who was talking about it. The tool that was going to allow you to climb the highest mountain is the most important thing.
It's a tribute to his time with Hatcher that he has been able to get TCU to this point in less than a year.
It took me a long time to believe. The confidence of Chris rubbed off on everyone. The man rubbed off on me. Hal rubbed my face. All of the guys that were there, that had been in the offense for a while, all had this constant belief that it was going to work against whoever they were playing against. It wasn't important who you were playing against.
After the Frogs' win in the Fiesta Bowl, he said that he was thinking of the coach and his father. He's going to rely on those lessons again Monday.
Chris was a great player but he wasn't a great athlete and he was undersized. I remember asking Chris how he did it. "He said that." He had a lot of confidence and belief in the system, and how if you have this constant belief, people will follow you. It can be contagious if you have a leader that has that. The magic of it is that.
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