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I think the point is that it's debatable by pmcdnd96

Which means he's not on the Swinney/Saban elite list. (I'm close to adding Day to that list.)

The discussion of "close to a national championship" is a tough to consider because it's a sliding scale. Let's play a silly hypothetical game about 2012. Let's say that instead of losing to Baylor, Kansas State had won that game. Let's say that they went on to beat Texas and finished the season ranked #1 and Notre Dame finished ranked #2. I think we would have crushed Kansas State, but let's assume we hung close and lost a close one. Would that change your opinion of Kelly? It wouldn't change mine.

Smart has a great recruiting record - a couple months ago, I looked up recruiting rankings over the past several years and if memory serves correctly, Alabama was the only team better than Georgia. So I think he deserves credit for that, as it is probably the single biggest determinant of success in college football. But I don't think Smart should get bonus points for staying close in a game with fairly even talent - I feel like that's the bare minimum a decent coach should be able to do.