“It’s old news.”

USA Today’s Ray Glier reviews Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia, which centers on the Michael Adams-Vince Dooley power struggle, but sounds like it turns over a lot more rocks than that.

See if this doesn’t get your blood boiling:

Among the details in the book:

• The school spent $138,000 for Adams’ presidential party in New Orleans when Hawaii played Georgia in the Sugar Bowl following the 2007 season, with $28,000 spent on a party Adams hosted at a popular New Orleans bar, Pat O’Brien’s. The money came from the school’s athletic association, according to the author, who reviewed previous reports of the party in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

• Don Leebern, a millionaire member of the state’s Board of Regents and an Adams’ ally, asked Dooley to make gymnastics coach Suzanne Yoculan an associate athletics director because the gymnastics coach at Alabama, a Yoculan rival, had a similar title. Dooley refused, and Barbara Dooley said in the book her husband’s decision to buck Leebern helped get Dooley pushed out as athletics director.

Yoculan’s gymnastics teams have won nine national championships. She and Leebern have a personal relationship.

• The book looks at the $250,000 Adams paid in a side deal to Donnan. The payment was never approved by the athletics board, and the audit by Deliotte & Touche said there was an effort to conceal the payment from the school’s athletics board.

• The audit report, which is included in the book, found that Adams’ family and friends received tickets to the presidential box at home football games under the guise they were major donor prospects to the university. The audit said Adams might have violated IRS tax code on taxable fringe benefits.

• Dooley said Adams wrote a letter to a high school basketball recruit taking credit for the hiring of Georgia basketball coach Jim Harrick and calling Harrick a “long-time friend.” Dooley wanted to hire Mike Brey, the current Notre Dame coach, who was at Delaware. Brey cooled to the job. Later, Dooley said Brey told him he was so put-off by Adams during an interview that he could not work for Georgia.

Let’s just hope nobody gives Mike Anderson a copy of the book.

And the most telling paragraph in the piece?

Whitt, the book’s author, died in January of a heart attack. He had been urged to write the book by former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell, a prominent Atlanta attorney and Adams critic. In the book, Bell, who has since died, said Adams used the athletics vs. academics angle to thwart any pressure from the Board of Regents and saved his job.

Let’s see, pissing off powerful people and hiding behind athletics bashing doesn’t strike me as the best recipe for success.  The release of this book is bound to stir up some powerful feelings.  We’ll see how long Adams can go with a “no comment”.

30 Comments

Filed under Michael Adams Wants To Rule The World

30 responses to ““It’s old news.”

  1. How does Adams still have a job?

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  2. RP

    Personal Relationship? Is that what we are calling it these days?

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  3. JB

    Michael Adams is a cock.

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  4. Adams is an embarassment to UGA. He adores attention, negative nearly as much as positive.

    The man didn’t know what a playoff was until he decided to jump to the front of that bandwagon last year.

    In a simple phrase: he makes me look more and more fondly back on the Knapp Administration.

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  5. Irishdawg

    Adams is proving as hard to get rid of as a tenured professor. Or Rasputin.

    I don’t know how he survived the shabby way he treated Dooley unless he has dirt on every member of the Board of Regents. The guy is a weapons grade douchebag and the sooner he’s gone, the better off UGA will be.

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  6. SLH

    I met Adams while NY this past December attending my company’s board meeting. I saw him inside Brooks Brothers down the street from our offices (the original location) and introduced myself. We had a nice chat and he gave me is card and said to shoot him an email. I did so – and took my time to say some nice things – a thoughtful email in the least.

    He never responded. No one from his office or the University responded. Not that I expect a grand return email or a personal postcard – but don’t give out your card and ASK for someone to contact you if you have zero intention of returning the gesture.

    Over the years, I had written Vince Dooley a few times and always got a nice return note. Nothing big, but a thoughtful response.

    I think I’ll re-email our President – this time with a different tone and message altogether.

    I thought he was a complete fucking jerk in the way he handled the most important athletic figure in our school’s history. Now I know that to be the case.

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    • ahhhmmm…case closed.

      Let us know if he responds. ; )

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    • DLR

      “Whitt, the book’s author, died in January of a heart attack. He had been urged to write the book by former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell, a prominent Atlanta attorney and Adams critic. ”

      When considering this entire story, you must keep in mind that UGA had just fired Griffin’s Bell law firm and they were extrememly mad about that. This entire attack on Adams was prompted and fueled by Bell’s firm and they pushed for the audit and a witch hunt for anything they could find to get back at Adams. If you skip over this fact and just buy into the “attack Adams” persepctive, you’re falling for the firm’s plan just liked they hoped you would.

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      • Derek

        Griffin Bell was an honorable man. Adams is not. That is all you need to know.

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        • DLR

          It was not Griffin Bell, who indeed was a fine man, that was bitter. It was former UGA attorney, Floyd Newton of King & Spalding. There’s so much more to all this story than most people know; it’s easy to take sides when you only know part of the story.

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          • That Adams pissed King & Spalding off doesn’t absolve him of anything.

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            • DLR

              I appreciate the fact that you have made your mind up and that facts should never get in the way of that, but the Board of Regents puts Adams’ authority over the UGA Athletic Dept (something that caused an adjustment period for the “good ole boy network” that was benefiting from things prior to MA’s arrival), and the extra perk in Donnan’s contract was a decision that was made at a point in time that the prospect of losing our coach would have been terrible, much as the idea of losing Richt to FSU might appear now. The school prez kept the loss from happening. As for Harrick “running roughshod” over our academics, a bit of examination into the fact that Jim’s son simply let some basketball players skip some basketball PE drills might have a hard time meeting that standard.

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      • Right. That $250K under the table payment to Donnan and allowing Harrick pere et fils to run roughshod over the academic side shouldn’t bother us at all.

        Please don’t insult my intelligence like this.

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      • dallasga6

        Mike….is that you???

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  7. JasonC

    Does anyone know if Adams is Kiffin’s personal mentor?

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  8. Tatum

    He wears a bowtie. Never trust a man in a bowtie. ‘Nuff said. Douchebag.

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  9. SLH

    I try to look at things in totality, and in doing so, I continuously return to the fact that Mike Adams is one of the most divisive figures in the history of UGA. To his credit, our academics and athletics have risen to new heights and the University, as an organization or “company”, has never been healthier. However a large part of that success can be credited to the Hope scholarship, very generous alumni, and the fine work of many individuals that work in various areas whose names we will never know but should.

    I maintain my stance that a University divided cannot prosper for long. And while we all value and love the school, a figure as divisive as Adams will ultimately weaken the school down to its roots. You damage the roots, you eventually kill the tree.

    Yes, I think he’s that dangerous.

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    • watcher16

      Our academics may be a little better, but its amazing to think what could be if/when he leaves. I’ve heard numerous big donor people say they will not give another dime to the university until he’s gone. There are probably more out there like that as well, and just think how much more the endowment will be once we get all of them contributing again. That’s more money to get more tenured professors, increase research, and really see our national rankings sky rocket (as alumni donations are factored into the national rankings these publications put out every year).

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  10. Vinings Dog

    I spoke to a famous alum (and big contributor) about Adams. He had numerous dealings with Adams through the UGA Foundation, and he felt Adams was like Bill Clinton in that Adams was relentless and NOTHING embarassed him.

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  11. LawDawg

    guess anderson got his copy of the book….

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  12. X-Dawg

    LawDawg…….WURD! 🙂

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  13. The Realist

    I think Adams is a crook, a liar, and without conscience… basically, a politician.

    What I don’t understand is that if Pres. Douchebag is such a great fundraiser, then why is Georgia lagging so far behind other prominent state schools in terms of endowment?

    When you combine his flaunting of the rules when it comes to benefits for his family, the underhanded dealings in the athletic department, as well as a lack of success in doing the one thing he is allegedly good at…

    I wish I had a job in which I was so entrenched that I could piss on everything and everyone associated with my job and be found beyond reproach.

    I guess it is hard to find fault in underhanded political dealings when you engage in underhanded political dealings yourself. Such is the flaw in a system where politicians regulate and oversee politicians.

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  14. Left to Right

    Adams is a boob, but can Dooley JUST-LET-IT-GO. Vince hasn’t in the past been above saying and doing things to hurt Adams even though it might also hurt Georgia athletics.

    The stuff about Mike Brey couldn’t be coming out at a worse time. Hey Vince, Adams should have given you an extention, but at this point you should move on and enjoy your status as Bulldog Emeritus. Let Adams go; he isn’t worth your disdain.

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  15. Waymon

    The truth is that Adams has not raised that much money. And don’t forget that the UGA faculty gave him a no confidence vote a year or two ago.

    A lot of big deal academics won’t go to a school with a situation like this one. All you are going to get are the second raters. Well, the top people are going to the really great schools, but UGA won’t get the people just below that.

    And with Adams calling for the ability to furlough professors UGA might not even get those people.

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  16. Robert

    Well , DLR if you are so knowledgeable and such an insider why don’t you tell us what all we don’t know ? Who the hell is Floyd Newton ?

    And Irishdawg +++1 on the “weapons grade”
    adjective .

    And Senator, you are right , most of this is old news

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