Bulletin board material? Kirby Smart calls out USC player’s comments on SEC crowds

Two months ago, a South Carolina football player was asked to name the “most hostile” SEC road environment he’d played and didn’t put Georgia on his list.

Now, days before USC visits No. 1 Georgia for its conference opener Saturday, UGA coach Kirby Smart is using that perceived slight as a rallying cry for Bulldogs fans.

During this summer’s SEC Media Days in Nashville, Tennessee, South Carolina senior defensive tackle Tonka Hemingway deemed Texas A&M’s Kyle Field and Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium the two toughest SEC road venues he’d played at, omitting UGA’s Sanford Stadium.

“Hostile? I’d probably say one of the loudest is Texas A&M,” Hemingway said July 20. “Texas A&M is a good one. Tennessee can get pretty loud, too, as well. So it’s between them two.”

Smart was asked about Hemingway’s comments during his Monday news conference in the context of the atmosphere at Sanford Stadium for UGA’s SEC opener and how important it was for fans to continue to show up for the Bulldogs, who are on a 20-game home winning streak.

“Yeah, I’m expecting it to be that,” Smart said Monday. “People want to question whether our fans are elite. Sounds like Tonka called them out. So maybe use Tonka for motivation and let him be the one that spurns our group to come out there at 3:30 and be really loud and fired up. So I certainly hope our fan base will be there. They’ve answered the bell every single time. I don’t know why they wouldn’t now.”

South Carolina is a 26-point underdog to Georgia, an SEC East Rival that’s won seven of its last eight meetings against the Gamecocks and two in a row. Kickoff is set for 3:30 p.m. on CBS.

The game will be Hemingway’s second in Athens, Georgia, as well as Shane Beamer’s second as the Gamecocks’ head coach. UGA has sold out Sanford Stadium (capacity 92,746) for its first two home games of 2023, per the school, and averaged a sell-out across six home games in 2022.

That per-game attendance ranked No. 9 nationally, according to D1Ticker.com. Georgia currently holds the nation’s longest home winning streak at 20 games (the last loss came to South Carolina in double overtime in 2019).

“This will be a rocking environment,” Beamer said Tuesday at his weekly press conference previewing the Georgia game. “When we go to Knoxville in a few weeks, it’ll be a rocking environment. ...

“This is the SEC. Our guys should embrace that. It was extremely difficult to communicate over there a couple years ago. I know how loud it can be. ... We know it’ll be loud and hostile.”