Georgia football will go up against a new Alabama head football coach next season after the news Wednesday evening that Nick Saban is retiring.

Saban won six national titles with the Crimson Tide, his last in 2020. Alabama officially confirmed the end of an era.

Kirby Smart and Georgia beat the Crimson Tide in Saban’s final College Football Playoff national championship game in the 2021 season, but Saban went 5-1 against the Bulldogs with Smart as coach.

Smart worked under Saban at LSU, the Miami Dolphins and Alabama.

He spent nine seasons under Saban with the Crimson Tide, but he’s established Georgia as a college football power in its own right by winning back-to-back national titles at his alma mater.

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“I can't say enough about the tremendous respect I have for him, the job he's done, how long he's done it,” Smart said before the SEC championship game last season. “People don't really understand how hard it is to be consistently really good, consistently great. He's accomplished that at the highest level to me. Our conference is certainly really tough and hard. He's done it for every year he's been there besides maybe the first. He's had really successful seasons. He's a really good leader. He's good at motivating. I think he's kind of evolved with the times in the way he goes about things.”

ESPN’s Pete Thamel listed Oregon coach Dan Lanning (a former Georgia defensive coordinator), Washington’s Kalen DeBoer, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, Penn State’s James Franklin, Florida State’s Mike Norvell and Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman as a projected target list.

The Tuscaloosa News also included Texas’ Steve Sarkisian on its “hot board,” but not Smart.

Smart set an SEC record of 29 straight wins before Saban and Alabama beat Georgia in the SEC championship game in December. That was the last of Saban’s 292 wins as a college coach.

Smart’s buyout if he were to leave for another job is $5 million before the end of the 2024 calendar year, according to the third amendment of his contact.

Georgia defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann, who interviewed for the Eagles defensive coordinator job last offseason, has ties to Alabama. The 34-year old worked as a Crimson Tide student assistant and graduate assistant and has two degrees from the school.

Smart said he took things from Saban that he leaned on when he took over his own program.

“Just attention to detail,” he said. “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. I don't know that I do it as well as he does when it comes to being able to focus on the task at hand and not get distracted on the little things.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Here's what Kirby Smart says made Nick Saban 'incredible'