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flag football
Georgia’s New AD Is a Rising Star
BUT THE SELECTION PROCESS LEAVES SOMETHING TO BE DESIRED
By Cy Brown news@flagpole.com
It’s a new year, and there’s a new man lead
ing the UGA athletic department. Back on
Jan. 6, Josh Brooks was named the new
athletics director, succeeding the recently
retired Greg McGarity. It’s a promotion to
the big chair for Brooks, who had been serv
ing as senior deputy athletic director, as well
as interim athletic director for the six short
days between McGarity’s retirement at the
end of 2020 and Brooks’ official coronation.
do your due diligence in a truly national
search.
In many ways, it smells like the Mark
Richt-to-Kirby Smart transition we saw
back in 2015. If you can remember back
five years—which seems like half a lifetime
ago—it wasn’t just Richt’s underperfor
mance that paved the way for his axing. It
was also that Smart, who had spent nine
wildly successful years running Alabama’s
Josh Brooks speaks to reporters after being named interim athletic director on Dec. 2.
At 41, Brooks becomes the youngest
athletic director for a Power Five program.
Despite his age, his promotion was not a
surprise. Brooks is a well-liked figure in
Athens, and he’s worked in UGA’s ath
letic department for most of the last 12
years, aside from short stints as AD at
Division III Millsaps College and deputy
AD at Louisiana-Monroe from 2014-2016.
Georgia loves nothing more than to hire
from within for big jobs. UGA hasn’t hired
an athletic director with no connection to
the school since Joel Eaves in 1967.
Which isn’t to say Brooks isn’t qualified.
Aside from what he’s done internally that
the public never sees, he’s spearheaded a
number of popular public-facing projects
during his time in Athens. Remember the
Jason Aldean concert at Sanford Stadium
in 2013? That was Brooks’ brainchild.
Scheduling the home-and-home against
Notre Dame, which wound up being two of
the football team’s biggest games of the last
decade? Brooks. The LED lights that blanket
Sanford in red for night games? Yeah, that
was Brooks, too.
But for all Brooks has done, his pro
motion still comes with a small bit of
concern, through no fault of his own. After
McGarity announced his retirement in late
November, UGA President Jere Morehead
convened an 11-person advisory council to
find a new AD. A little over a month later—
and less than a week after McGarity’s offi
cial retirement—the No. 2 administrator
in the athletic department was promoted.
That suddenness belies the idea that there
was ever much of a search in the first place.
A month and change isn’t enough time to
defense under Nick Saban, was tired of
waiting for the job at his alma mater to
open up. Rumors were swirling that he
was being lined up to replace the recently
retired Steve Spurrier at South Carolina.
(There’s an alternative universe not worth
thinking about.) Smart was a rising star,
and the idea of his leading the program was
too enticing to pass up. So in one of his few
shrewd moves, McGarity fired Richt to pave
the way for Smart to return home.
Like Smart, Brooks is a young rising star.
If he didn’t get promoted to athletic direc
tor soon, someone else would have swooped
in and hired him. And if Morehead and his
search committee had picked someone from
outside the program, it’s doubtful Brooks
would’ve been happy to go back to his old
job. So the time was right for McGarity—
who, like Richt, was an old dog who hadn’t
learned any new tricks—to step aside and
make way for the next thing.
That isn’t to say McGarity was fired or
forced out like Richt. In fact, Morehead has
gone on record saying that he was happy for
McGarity to keep the gig for however long
he wanted it. Which is why it makes sense
that Morehead wanted more of the same, so
he went with McGarity’s understudy. After
all, Brooks heaped praise on Morehead and
McGarity after being named interim AD in
December. “I don’t think this is a time for
change,” he said.
Brooks may well be an upgrade on
McGarity, which shouldn’t be hard. He
could even wind up being an outstanding
athletic director, and I hope he does. But
the process that landed him in the position
leaves a lot to be desired. ©
10 FLAGPOLE.COM | JANUARY 27, 2021
TONY WALSH/UGA ATHLETICS