For the seventh time as Georgia football coach, Kirby Smart is preparing to take his team to battle against Alabama, the college game’s standard bearer that his program has caught up to in its winning ways.

This time is different because Kalen DeBoer will be on the Alabama sideline Saturday night as head coach wearing a headset in his first SEC game.

Nick Saban, who won 11 SEC titles and six national championships in 17 seasons at Alabama, stunned the college football world on Jan. 10 when he announced he was retiring.

Smart said the next day he was “a little shocked when it came about.”

Georgia football coach Kirby Smart on Nick Saban's presence Saturday

Now, eight and a half months later, he’s not viewing going up against an Alabama team without Saban as something like a trip into the Twilight Zone.

“No, I don't expect it to be strange,” said Smart, who spent nine seasons under Saban at Alabama and worked with him at LSU and the Miami Dolphins.  “That's just the normal course of progression.”

Saban’s presence will be felt more than just the fact that the place Georgia will be playing in on Saturday night for the prime-time game is now Saban Field at Bryant-Denny Stadium and that the 72-year-old Saban will be on scene as an ESPN analyst.

Saban’s imprint on Alabama remains in another way.

“Well, he recruited a lot of them, and they're good players, you know, and I think any time you go against a really good team that's a powerhouse in college football, it's a challenge,” Smart said.

Despite roster turnover after the coaching change, Alabama is ranked No. 1, just ahead of Georgia, in the 247Sports Team Talent Composite.

“To me, it’s still Alabama,” Georgia inside linebacker Smael Mondon said. “It’s still like a really talented team. Got a lot of athletes on their roster. They’re still big, strong and physical. Whether Nick Saban’s there or not, it’s still a good football team.”

Said wide receiver Arian Smith: “They obviously have a new culture, not a new culture, but a new head coach. I’m sure he changed a few things, but it’s still the same Alabama team we played in the past.”

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What Georgia football coach Kirby Smart learned from Nick Saban

Smart built his powerhouse program winning national titles in 2021 and 2022 and used what he learned under Saban to build his foundation at Georgia.

“Just attention to detail,” Smart said before the SEC championship game last year. “The ability to be locked down on the task at hand. Never before has our sport or this level of college football required such multi-tasking. One minute you're working on special teams, the next minute you're chasing guys, dealing with the portal, dealing with transfers, NIL. His ability to compartmentalize and work at the task at hand was always incredible to me. It's something that I try to do.”

Smart went just 1-5 against Saban including a 27-24 loss to Alabama in the SEC championship game last December.

Now Saban is on the ESPN College GameDay set. He sits next to the free-spirited Pat McAfee who led chants of “Boomer Sooner!” and “Texas sucks!” to the crowd in Norman before the Tennessee-Oklahoma game last week.

Saban has been widely praised for his new post-coaching role that included working the NFL Draft. He’ll break down the game Saturday but won’t match coaching wits against Smart.

“He's extremely thorough and he enjoys what he does,” Smart said. “I'm thrilled that he gets an opportunity to do what he wants to do and be with who he wants to be with within his family and enjoy that. I'm really happy he's still part of college football because he makes college football better.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: What Kirby Smart thinks of coaching an Alabama team without Nick Saban