INGLEWOOD, Calif. — A year ago, Kirby Smart became just the second of Nick Saban’s assistant coaches to beat him. On Monday, Smart became perhaps the first coach since Saban re-entered college football back in 2007 who can lay claim to owning the sport in the way he has for so long. 

Each and every time someone has looked likely to put a halt to Alabama’s year-over-year dominance, Saban endured and his opposition faded. There was Dabo Swinney’s Clemson, which twice beat Alabama in national title games, but sans-Trevor Lawrence hasn’t made it back to the playoff. There was Jimbo Fisher’s Florida State and Urban Meyer’s Ohio State. Ever so briefly, there was Ed Orgeron’s LSU. All success stories. None relevant for nearly as long as Saban’s Alabama. 

Now? Smart has done what no one could since Saban all the way back in 2011 and ’12. He’s won two straight national titles, the second of those coming on Monday night at SoFi Stadium with a 65-7 mauling of TCU. Alabama’s season finished all the way back on New Year’s Day with a victory in the Cotton Bowl, the sort of game long rendered irrelevant by the standard Saban has set in Tuscaloosa. 

Alabama will be back, of course. Saban hauled in the No. 2 recruiting class in the nation last month, and no one in their right mind expects the Tide to go down easy. But at least as of Tuesday morning, it’s Smart whose program sets college football’s standard. 

“The disease that creeps into your program is called entitlement. I’ve seen it firsthand,” Smart said, not an hour after reaching the mountaintop. “If you can stomp it out with leadership, then you can stay hungry. And we have a saying around our place: We eat off the floor. And if you’re willing to eat off the floor, then you can be special.” 

That might as well be the Saban of yesteryear talking. 

“He gets everything out of us,” receiver Kearis Jackson said of Smart. “We’re all on scholarship and he’s gonna get that scholarship out of us.” 

This national championship game domination looked remarkably like Saban’s 42-14 shellacking of Notre Dame in 2012, another decimation that delivered a back-to-back title. 

That one saw Alabama cement itself as the center of the sport. This one saw Georgia take up the Crimson Tide’s mantle, with Saban relegated to sitting and watching as an ESPN analyst. Right down to players citing imaginary doubters postgame, though, this was a work of art out of Saban’s book. 

“Really just instilling in us that we’re not gonna be hunted here at the University of Georgia,” right tackle Warren McClendon told The Post about Smart’s impact. “We’re gonna be the ones doing the hunting. And we’re gonna be the aggressors and we’re gonna come at our opponents every week.” 

At Smart’s Georgia, that’s the right mindset to have against anyone. Sonny Dykes’ TCU, certainly. And yes, even Saban’s Alabama.