georgia football kirby smart

Georgia coach Kirby Smart says the energy is rising, and the Bulldogs have more players ready to play winning football with the opening game fast approaching

Smart appeared via FaceTime on College GameDay on Saturday as the popular ESPN pregame show broadcast live from Atlanta.

The No. 5-ranked Bulldogs open the season against No. 3 Clemson at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C.

“It ramps it up when you are playing a team like Clemson, and a program like Clemson,” Smart said, asked what effect playing an elite opponent in the opener has on fall camp.

“All your guys come fired up and ready to play. We’ve started on them the last couple of days, and you can see the energy starting to increase.”

The Tigers have won 10 straight regular-season games against SEC teams dating back to their 2014 loss to Georgia.

Bulldogs’ quarterback JT Daniels will have a lot to do with the outcome, and Smart made it clear the offense is in much better shape than a year ago when Daniels was still sidelined while healing from the knee injury he suffered at USC.

I” think everybody is a lot more comfortable with the guy at the helm understanding what to do in Coach (Todd) Monken’s offense,” Smart said. “In terms of repetitions, we’ve had a lot more. Just spring practice alone, we were able to get more work.

“But getting quality depth and more guys that can play winning football, that’s kind of been the objective of camp, and we’ve been able to do that.”

The Bulldogs also had some fun.

ESPN GameDay showed the clip of Smart diving off the 10-meter high dive as the players called out his name.

WATCH: Kirby Smart does high dive

“I had no intentions of jumping, none,” Smart said. “But once they started chanting my name, I had a lot of peer pressure

“Coach (Mark) Richt used to do a backflip, I can’t imagine that.”