He’s obviously not as hands on as many anonymous Internet denizens would have him be, damn it.
Q: What kind of feedback have you gotten from fans and donors regarding the football season?
A: “I get tons of letters. ‘You need to fire (Todd) Grantham, you need to do this, you need to do that.’ Three years ago it was, ‘you need to fire (Mike) Bobo.’ It’s just the soup of the day. But I tell them, I don’t hire assistant coaches. [Emphasis added.] After the LSU game, it was totally different. It’s amazing, the swing of emotions people have. I wish I saved them all. Even during games people are emailing me. Those are the ones I wish I could read back to them because people are so reactionary. There are so many ways of technology to get to people. It’s our world today and we’re living in it. We shouldn’t be surprised what anybody does any more. Sometimes people do irrational things. But it’s our world and nothing surprises me these days. We just have to manage the best we can.”
Q: You’re meeting with Coach Richt on Thursday. What kind of suggestions will you make?
A: “We’ll go through things I see from the athletic director’s chair that might help. Like every other coach, I’m sure he has some things he feels like he needs or he’d like to think about. We go through that with every coach every year. I want to make sure I’m providing the resources they need. There may be times I can’t do it, but there will be a reason behind it. But it’s the job of the administration to provide the resources that are necessary and provide an environment where the coaches feel like they can get the job done.”
Suggestions, bah humbug. If you’re not gonna fund an IPF, Greg, start firing some people!
Get The Picture 
I’m not sure how to feel after reading that. It was both rational and irrational at the same time.
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Well, that’s fair. So are we. 😉
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Hey, at least we’re not as far gone as some Texas boosters that can be named…..oh, wait…..what?…..you say we have idiots like that too??……..(hastey exit).
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If nothing else, at least we’re self-aware of our delusion. 😉
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Emailing during a game…folks are futz.
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I wonder how many of them are:
Dear Greg,
Tell Bobo to stop running the ball up the middle!
Regards,
Bill “Mad Dawg” Williams
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Dear Greg:
My grandmother, seated next to me, has correctly predicted what play Bobo would call on offense for the last 3 series. This predictablitility is completely unacceptable. Excellence demands a better OC, and I demand excellense.
your truly,
know it all in Section 103
Dear KInow it all:
Thanks for your input, which I value greatly. I am always intereseted to hear what our UGA fan base thinks, and appreciate your sharing it with me.
Greg McGarity
ps: your grandmother should get a job as a defensive coordinator at LSU or South Carolina. Those guys didnt have much of a clue figuring out what Bobo was calling all day. Just saying.
GMG
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All I want is for this guy to say he wants to win as badly as the fans do. He knows how irrational and desperate the fan base is but he rarely talks about getting things fixed or even attempts to reassure the fan base.
Instead we get “sometimes people do irrational things” or comments about “the society of the miserable”.
I get what he’s saying but it’s still less than productive public relations.
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So you want someone in charge to act like the fans act? Do you realize how absurd that sounds?
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#VFL
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Exactly where did I suggest that? The point was that this guy is less than stellar at PR and does not handle a frustrated fanbase well.
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However if you read through to the end, it seems that the stress has gotten to him. “You’re always wondering, what can I do to make it better?”
So it remains to be seen if the stress is potential revenue loss related or failing to be an elite program related. Probably both.
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“I want to make sure I’m providing the resources they need. There may be times I can’t do it, but there will be a reason behind it. But it’s the job of the administration to provide the resources that are necessary and provide an environment where the coaches feel like they can get the job done.”
So…the “administration” he is talking about is the ATHLETIC ADMINISTRATION one would assume, right?
Because I doubt very seriously that anybody in the university administration would say it is their job to do….what he said.
It would be nice to hear Greg say…you know something like….”Look folks, we ain’t Bama and we are not gonna be Bama cause the people who actually make the rules I have to live with are not interested in us being Bama, at all, in any shape, manner or form.”
But I won’t hold my breath.
Greg makes a helluva lot of money. Part of his job description is absorbing the emails and ugly texts he gets.
Life for Greg McGarity would be a lot simpler, I suspect, if the fan base would just accept that we are doing very well in football within the framework we are given…the playing field we are dealt.
But as long as there is somebody somewhere in the neighborhood who has more glass footballs than us, the emails are gonna come.
The view from outside Athens seems to be we have all this capacity, yet we are not meeting MY expectations.
I just hope Vandy is not, at this very moment, talking to Mike Bobo.
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Bobo to Vanderbilt as HC actually makes a lot more sense than Bobo to Alabama as OC.
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Western Kentucky makes more sense to me for Bobo
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I think WKU plans on promoting from within.
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Mike and Todd going all WWF at midfield? Awesome!
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Ha! That made me LOL!
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I’m surprised Bobo’s name didn’t come up more for the Louisville job, although it now appears the fix was in with regards to filling that position.
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Here’s a blast from the past….George McIntyre….is that right?
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Very accurate Scorpio and McG and Richt know the fans don’t want to hear “we ain’t Bama nor do we want to be.” Most of us know that and know we can’t do anything about it so we accept the complacency. Demanding some public scoldings from McG and/or Richt is a waste of time.
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I have been concerned about our AD for some time. I was in favor of hiring him initially. I actually wrote a letter to the Chair of the search committee, David Shipley, endorsing Greg. I believed at the time that Greg was the real brains behind Florida’s success in football and basketball. But some things have happened in the past few years that make me question whether hiring him was the right decision. Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that Greg was merely an errand boy at Florida and had as much to do with the Gator’s success as the rooster has to do with the sunrise. This interview does nothing to improve my current opinion of him. If anything it makes me even more nervous about him. Read the part where he says that the job “wears on him” and he can’t understand how someone could do this job for 20 years. Every super successful sports school has or had an AD as the backbone of the Athletics Department. Foley at FU and Mal Moore at Bama are examples. Regrettably I have now come to the conclusion that Greg McGarity isn’t up to the job.
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Ah….yer Honor…Mal Moore????? I know he hired Nicky, but he also hired ah….hell a bunch a bad ones, too. (or at least coaches that did not satisfy Bear’s Boys.)
Unfortunately, we may knot know whether McGarity is up to the job till it comes time to replace Mark Richt…long may that be.
I wrote letters, too, but I am not sure…yet, I was wrong. It is however interesting, I guess, to note McGarity was not Dooley’s choice to replace him, which did not turn out all that well.
We can’t have everything….I would say when he says the job wears on him and so forth, you are getting the straight talk we seem to crave.
I ain’t tellin you you are wrong, just that my jury is still out.
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I have always thought that Dooley held/holds a grudge about the way his career ended at UGA and his recommendation of Red Panties for the AD job was sabotage. At bottom, Dooley is an Auburn man, not a Georgia man. The way Barbara acted while SOD was HC at UT is a window into how they really feel about UGA.
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+1
Everything Dooley did as an AD and after being forced out as AD screams bitterness.
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OK, OK. Replace Mal Moore with DeLoss Dodds of Texas.
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Well, there’s that Brown guy they just fired…er…let retire…er….bought out…whateves….
Bottom line is they ain’t no such thing as a great AD anymore, they all steely-eyed bean counters.
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Firing? Are you sure, Senator? I mean, don’t we want that 400 person football support staff of coaches who are not definitely not coaches.
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Q: “You’re meeting with Coach Richt on Thursday. What kind of suggestions will you make?”
A: “You need to fire (Todd) Grantham,”
B: “you need to do this,”
C: “you need to do that.”
D: “you need to fire (Mike) Bobo.”
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McGarity has nothing to do with the assistant coordinators? Just how in hell did Grantham get a big raise after his first year while Richt and Bobo got zilch? Richt was responsible for the slap to his own face and Bobo’s as well?
B-M is beginning to smell more like BM. Who left the conference room door open for the world to hear Lawhorne set the takedown of Richt on Greg’s shoulders two years ago? McGarity covering his ass, that’s who. Who has lagged behind our opponents in upgrading facilities? Ever wonder how Tenn attracts so many recruits now?
Greg, have the contract let now and get the indoor facility built before summer is over. Dammit!
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“Ever wonder how Tenn attracts so many recruits now?”
The Hostess Cupcakes are getting back together again?
http://archive.wbir.com/sports/article/286961/5/Ex-coach-Kiffins-Orange-Pride-scandal-outlined-in-new-book-
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Is it just me or did GM not even address the very issue he brought up? He mentions fans asking him to FIRE coaches, then he says he doesn’t HIRE coaches. Those seem like two different issues to me. Am I missing something?
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Yes. Greg is informally known by his SEC AD peers as the Yossarian of the group.
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Actually, he is more of the Major-Major of SEC ADs “Only come by my office when I’m not here….”
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Good point. I never really got to the CliffsNotes.com character development part because I didn’t have a descrambler to break the wiki amirite da vinci code explanation of the title
“Explanation of the novel’s title[edit]
The title is a reference to a fictional bureaucratic stipulation which embodies forms of illogical and immoral reasoning. The opening chapter of the novel was originally published in New World Writing as Catch-18 in 1955, but Heller’s agent, Candida Donadio, requested that he change the title of the novel, so it would not be confused with another recently published World War II novel, Leon Uris’s Mila 18. The number 18 has special meaning in Judaism (it means Alive in Gematria; see Chai) and was relevant to early drafts of the novel which had a somewhat greater Jewish emphasis.[22]
The title Catch-11 was suggested, with the duplicated 1 paralleling the repetition found in a number of character exchanges in the novel, but because of the release of the 1960 movie Ocean’s Eleven, this was also rejected. Catch-17 was rejected so as not to be confused with the World War II film Stalag 17, as was Catch-14, apparently because the publisher did not feel that 14 was a “funny number.” Eventually the title came to be Catch-22, which, like 11, has a duplicated digit, with the 2 also referring to a number of déjà vu-like events common in the novel.[22]”
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Nice reference…
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Has anyone ever called him the Henry Blake of the SEC ADs? I guess that would be less cool.
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Nah. Any time that you can reference MASH it’s all good.
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Here is what he could say instead of whining about having to deal with irrational fans (that sort of comes with the territory when you are the AD of a major D-1 program): “After careful consideration, I have decided that we are putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage relative to our SEC brethren when it comes to our suspension policy for marijuana usage. Let’s face it, society has dramatically changed its attitude towards recreational use of marijuana in the last decade, and we need to update our policy to reflect that.”
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Uuhh, OK. In short: Smoke’em if you got’em.
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I suggested this years ago…”Out of admiration of the sucess of the University of Alabama in NCAA competition…especially in football…The Universtiy of Georgia is immediatly adopting and implementing the discipline and recruiting policies of our sister institution to our immediate west. We also reserve the right to ammend or bastardize those policies with ones from other SEC schools….especially Auburn”.
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Yes. Why should we (and Kentucky?) be bogarting the joint of punishment
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Damn! That one will lick our ears for months to come.
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From GM’s comments, it appears CMR will be reviewing the AD’s performance when they meet, and not the other way around.
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Never sure about anything Towers asks or writes? So in that vein, this is my take from reading the article. Is this how the meeting will go today with Greg and Mark. “Greg, I’ll take 2 burgers all the way, hold the onions, fries, and a soft drink. And could you have music piped in the outdoor facility.”
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What’s up with the beaten-down and weary attitude from McGarity in this interview? What’s with the references to the gloomy and tough times UGA is going through? I know it was a tough football season and basketball sucks, but is there something else I’m missing?
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Because after last night, he’s working on a contract extension for the basketball coach?
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He sounds as if he just now understands that Old Dawg Boosters led him down the primrose path when he first came on board. Let’s see if he has a leadership mind of his own to help dig out of his self-dug hole. I wish him the best of luck, but getting behind the coaches and pushing with one hand and doling out a few carrots with the other may be what is needed.
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Hell, forget the IPF and buy drones…since stealing other teams plans seems fair to everyone..On the other hand, better build the IPF because Auburn probably already has a drone.That explains the miracle season!
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As an aside, I know a guy that called Vince Dooley’s home # and left a message saying “something needed to be done” about Donnan after the South Carolina loss in 2K.
And he was PROUD of doing this.
WTF!
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I would have been in favor of leaving QC at theColumbia airport after that one, but that is probably unduly harsh.
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He would have just rolled another spleef and waited on the tarmac to hitch a ride.
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