ATHENS — Kirby Smart had a plan for holding satellite recruiting camps. He and Georgia’s staff were “gung ho” about it. And yet, when the very idea was outlawed on Friday, Smart, along with seemingly every SEC head coach, couldn’t have been happier.

“We were gung ho, we were going to do what we had to do,” Smart said on Saturday. “We were going to go compete and go do some satellite camps. But to be honest with you, it’s probably a sigh of relief, as far as the stress of having to go out and control the controllable.”

The satellite recruiting camps were outlawed, effective immediately, on Friday in a vote by the 11 FBS conferences. Four of the five major conference voted against it, with the Big Ten being the exception.

Ohio State and Michigan had both planned satellite camps in the Atlanta area in June.

The SEC voted last year at its summer meetings to continue its self-imposed rule against holding satellite camps. But commissioner Greg Sankey vowed that if the NCAA didn’t act, the SEC would change its rule and allow its schools to pursue and participate in them. So until Friday’s vote, Smart was planning for it. But reluctantly.

“I mean, it was a hard to say who’s going to go, what coach is going to go, who stays, do you do it during your camp? You’ve got camps going on here, you’ve got camps going on there,” Smart said. “There were a lot of questions that still had to be answered, and that just takes that away.”