Andy Staples ranks the head coaching job at Georgia as the fifth most attractive in all of college football, citing facilities, revenue and recruiting base (coupled with a subtle jab at Georgia Tech).
Now, I’m a Georgia partisan – shocking to discover, I know – but I’m not blind. That hasn’t always been the case. A school which boasts the hires of an assistant running backs coach and a 1-AA head coach (after Georgia was unceremoniously dumped by the not-so-special Glen Mason, remember) as Richt’s immediate predecessors wasn’t exactly siphoning off the cream of the coaching crop, so to speak. Even if you categorize some of the decision making which went into those hires as inept (and that’s a kind way of describing the process that led to Ray Goff becoming the head honcho), there’s no way before this last decade that a neutral observer would call Athens an élite destination.
So if it is now, ironically, I’d think you’d have to say that Mark Richt has had a hand in making it so. A significant hand.