By: Drayton Hogarth

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

For the first time in 15 seasons, the Georgia Bulldogs will have a new leader on the sidelines.

Kirby Smart has taken over for Mark Richt as the face of the program. Smart is coming home to his alma mater after a long tenure as the Alabama Crimson Tide defensive coordinator.

Even before Coach Smart is able to take the field for his first game, he has had to make some very tough decisions for the football program in regards to poor choices by some of the players.

These are the kind of decisions that can establish a strong leadership over a team, or make a coach look weak and ineffective to his players. In particular, the case of Jonathan Ledbetter has pushed Kirby Smart to make very tough decisions early on in his coaching tenure.

Ledbetter was charged with misdemeanor alcohol related charges, but later had the charges dropped. However, three months later Ledbetter was charged with DUI and underage possession.

Apparently, the lesson wasn’t learned; easy decision, the coach needs to lay down the law and dismiss the young man from the program right?

So far, Smart has increased the suspension from one game to saying that people will be surprised at what the punishment would end up being. Coach Smart has decided that the best way to help Jonathan Ledbetter would be to get him into a program for treatment.

Georgia fans need to only hear Coach Smart at his press conference to hear the fire that Smart has for his players.

A reporter asked him about Ledbetter’s suspension, but Kirby seemed to bristle and began giving a standard answer of it “…being an undetermined number of games and it is a situation that is fluid and moving.” Then, as if channeling his inner Saban, Smart turned the situation around to answer it his way. “It’s more important to me that you guys would ask ‘how’s Jonathan doing?’ Nobody asks that…I’m waiting on one of y’all to ask me ‘how’s Jonathan doing?’” and dramatically paused to wait for someone to actually ask the question.

When someone complies, Kirby continues to emphasis that “Jonathan is doing really good, Jonathan is not with the team right now, he’s going to see specialists and getting help, and that’s what is important to me, not how many games is he suspended. I wish THAT could be the focal point instead of WHAT is his punishment and how many games is he suspended? Let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about what’s good for Jonathan.”

After having a coach like Mark Richt, who always had the describer of “good coach and even better person” said about him, Bulldog fans wanted to take at least a couple of steps up with the on-the-field product, but there are none who wanted to take a step back in the character department.

Even though it is early on in the Smart era for Georgia, we are seeing a great blend of what Georgia fans want to see. By not taking the easy route with a player going through potential addiction issues like Jonathan Ledbetter, Smart is taking each situation on a case by case basis and will provide each player the most possible help that they can receive.

The last thing Ledbetter needs right now is to be booted from the program to “deal with it” on his own. There is a limit to trying to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, but the young man can   only turn his life around with the help that Georgia and Coach Smart can provide.

For Georgia fans, it appears that the program has the potential to take those next couple of steps on the field and maintain a high standard of character both on and off the field.

Now all that is needed is for the season to get under way. Who’s ready for some football?