NEW ORLEANS – The similarities of these two Sugar Bowl head coaches are many. Georgia football coach Kirby Smart’s dad was a high school football coach. So is Ole Miss coach Pete Golding’s daddy.

Smart played defensive back, safety to be exact. So did Golding.

When both Smart and Golding finished their playing days, they hired on as graduate assistant coaches at their alma maters.

Following those apprenticeships both Smart and Golding cut their coaching teeth in the Division II Gulf South Conference, Kirby at Valdosta State and Pete at his alma mater, Delta State.

Smart worked as a defensive coordinator for Nick “He of Seven National Championships” Saban at Alabama. So did Golding.

In this age of high powered, spread-the-field offenses when most head coaches worked first as assistant coaches on that side of the ball, both Smart and Golding rose through the coaching ranks on the defensive side. 

Both Smart, 50, and Golding, 41, are sons of the South and speak with decidedly Southern accents. Both tend to become very animated when they talk.

And that’s where similarities pretty much end. Smart has won 117 games and two national championships. Golding has won one game, period.

The Ole Miss hope – some would say, the Ole Miss dream – is that Golding can produce anywhere near similar success in Oxford, Mississippi, as Smart has in Athens, Georgia. And, yes, those similar backgrounds are part of what Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter had in mind when he  promoted Golding to head coach on Nov. 30 after Lane Kiffin flew the Ole Miss coop.

“Similar backgrounds, similar pedigree, no doubt about it,” Carter said. “Their journey has been very similar. Man, we’d love to have some of that same success Georgia has had.”

Of course, they would. That would mean four SEC Championships and two national titles over the next decade.

But Carter had far more than that in mind when he elevated Golding, as he explained Tuesday: “I just think Pete is uniquely fit for Ole Miss. I think that’s what I have learned over the last three years. Man, Pete Golding loves Ole Miss. His family loves this place. … When you see him in that building and you hear him around the players and the respect they have for him, all those things are great. The fact that he wants to build something really special here at Ole Miss. That makes a ton of difference, too.”

That his career path mirrors that of Smart is far from lost on Golding. Where Smart is concerned, Golding has been a long-time fan, going back to Golding’s first year as a graduate coach at Delta State. Smart was then Saban’s defensive coordinator at Alabama helping win national championships.

“I remember studying their tape, trying to figure out what they were doing and how we could increase our package and do it better,” Golding said. “I was coaching in DII in the Gulf South Conference, and I appreciated that Coach Smart had been at Valdosta State. It was a respect factor based on where he had come from and how he did it. And then, obviously, I worked with a lot of guys who worked with him, so that I felt I knew him better than I really did.”

That respect, Smart said Tuesday, is mutual.

“Pete worked his way up through the ranks, very similar to how I did,” Smart said. “He’s coached under sone really good coaches, been part of of some really good defensive staffs. … I don’t know Pete that well, I just know him through other people. I’m happy for him. I’m happy when someone that works as hard as he did and worked his way up and dedicated himself to being a position coach, a coordinator and then a head coach. That’s the way it is supposed to be. That’s the way it is supposed to go if you’re able to do it. He’s done it.”

Listen to Smart and Golding and you get a sense that, regardless of how little they know one another, they are part of a fraternity of defense-minded coaches. They clearly take great pride in having built their careers on that side of the ball. They are from the school of football thought that while offense sells tickets, defense wins championships. Golding says its only natural that defensive coaches pull for each other. He remembers thinking earlier in his career that all the head coaching jobs were going to the latest hot-shot offensive coordinators.

“I think any time you are a defensive coach and you see a defensive coach get a head job, you pull for him,” Golding said. “You want him to have success and create more opportunities for defensive guys to become head coaches. I don’t know about a fraternity but I do think we kind of pull for each other.”

While the mutual admiration society will take about a four-hour break on the first night of 2026, the guess here is that the shared respect will extend far beyond. 

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