Gee, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say Seth Emerson detects a trend.
What we do know is that this is yet another case of UGA’s tendency to look inward when it comes to hires, big and small.
Kupets-Carter is a Georgia alum. So is Kirby Smart, who when Georgia hired him was very qualified and had been sought after by other schools. But if Smart ends up struggling the next few years critics will continue to wonder why Georgia did not take longer to look and have a truly national search.
Greg McGarity was the Kirby Smart version of that search seven years ago. An alumnus and an Athens native, McGarity was serving as the No. 2 administrator at an SEC rival. He was the obvious choice, given his connections and Florida’s all-sports success. But unfortunately that success hasn’t translated to Georgia since McGarity came home.
When UGA women’s basketball team had an opening, the school spent nearly a month looking and then hired the team’s top assistant, Joni Taylor. The book is still out on Taylor, who has recruited well, but missed the NCAA tournament this past season.
It’s not just athletics: Even the search for a president at UGA a few years ago ended up with the school just promoting the provost – and UGA alumnus — Jere Morehead. That was a fairly popular hire among the rank-and-file at UGA, as Morehead was one of them and had been for years.
Were he as aged as I, Seth could have gone farther. Every AD since Joel Eaves has been someone with previous or existing ties to the school.
This isn’t so much a condemnation of the administration as it is us. “That was a fairly popular hire among the rank-and-file at UGA, as Morehead was one of them and had been for years.” — how many times have we seen that kind of comfort pass for deep thinking among alumni and the fan base about someone the school hires? You’d think if that was really a valid benchmark for excellence, the University of Georgia would have a far more prestigious recent past than it actually has. Yet we never seem to learn. Go Dawgs!
Get The Picture 
“Every AD since Joel Eaves has been an inside hire.”
True, but the last President we hired that was not Jere Morehead was Mike Adams. I rest my case. 😉
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Yes. I think Adams has scared us from looking elsewhere.
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Hiring for administration is fundamentally different than hiring for athletics.
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Not enough. Let me introduce our provost…
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Truer, nor more prophetic words, have ever been spoken: “Yet we never seem to learn.” I’d imagine it near impossible to find a more incestuous athletic department, regardless of the level, anywhere in the country.
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Tennessee was close. Good to see Seth put the words to paper, I agree and have been against this for some time.
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And that’s another Bulldog point of pride!!
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We want to be Alabama so bad, but we seem not to have noticed that Alabama was mired in mediocrity until they finally got over the idea that they had to hire coaches who’d been “touched by the Bear” to succeed. They go outside the family, get a proven coach and … boom.
Your results may vary, of course, but I don’t know what Georgia’s done that’s so great that we’re convinced we have to keep doing it our way and can only promote or hire Georgia people.
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^^This!!
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So… Hiring Mike Price is what finally did it?
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Well played, sir
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Could have been worse…UGA could have hired Derek Dooley as head football coach. That would have been the most incestuous hire ever.
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He’s not “one of us.”
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Inside hires are willing to work for less and are too connected to spill the beans on where the rest of the money goes.
Another Win/Win for The Georgia Way.
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Athens is a great place to live, as we all know. So, by hiring people that are part of the inner circle, you get a willingness to overlook the Georgia Way. In Coach Richt’s case, you had willingness to look the other way because he and his family didn’t want to leave.
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To add to that- people that don’t know how great Athens is aren’t willing to take that leap. That’s how you end up with a former GA as the HC of one of the most successful gymnastics program of all time and an assistant coach getting promoted to HC of a womens basketball team that was one of the most successful.
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Just remember, its not nepotism if they’re qualified. I have no comment on the other applicants who were more qualified.
Seriously though, should this trend be classified as nepotism, or hubris? I say both.
Or maybe they just put a huge value on new hires already knowing their way around campus.
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Hiring a son, as Donnan and Harrick did, is nepotism. I think UGA hiring is more akin to incest…
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The Georgia Way out
There can be no disputin’
It is a mutant
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In the final analysis hiring their sons is exactly what did Donnan and Harrick in. Lesson here: Don’t hire your own kid. If the kid can’t cut it your head in on the block, too.
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organizational incest…always leads to deformity.
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We need to get a Jeremy Pruitt type on the athletic board.
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I volunteer. 🙂
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Interestingly, we’ve very rarely gone inside for a head coach. Smart, of course, has been at Bama for a good while. Goff was a true inside hire. But Richt, Donnan, Dooley, and Butts, and who knows how much farther back–all these were outside hires. The lesson is that it’s simplistic to make any broad generalizations–just get the best person available, period. If he’s already in the system, that may or may NOT be a plus. Smart actually brings in “outside” freshness from Bama, while being one of our own. I would agree that promotion from within lends itself to laziness, which has often been the case in our other hires–Ron Jirsa comes to mind.
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Yep, incest is best.
No doubt the passing of Jan Kemp kept her from being hired as UGA President or AD.
Next time there is an opening Senator, please apply.
You can count on all us giving you glowing recommendations.
Now will the Jackets fire their baseball coach who dropped all three to the Diamond Dawgs. Clearly there is a basis and trend for his departure.
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The most astounding thing to me, as an out-of-state alumnus, is how a University so fundamentally connected (however deep and wide you interpret that) to a large global city can be so unequivocally behind the curve in relation to peers that we, rightly or wrongly, regularly perceive as “cow colleges” in relation to UGA’s total package.
It seems like this developing story line should be something you would read on a Mississippi State message board. But, it’s Georgia. What?
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The real lesson here.
Confirmation that as long as McGarity is the current AD, do not count on any solid winning coach coming to UGA in any sport.
McGarity has destroyed that.
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Seems very myopic to me. McGarity is incompetent and unqualified, the fact he is still on board is troubling. The hits just keep on a coming with him.
There are many cases in business/corporations where developing, and promoting, from within is an excellent practice and beneficial to a strong company. Athletic coaches for a variety of sports does not lend itself to that practice, the sample size to draw from is too small, and the coaches do not work together on projects as each stands on its own. Chances that the best choice just happens to be one of your alums is pretty small, especially at the exact time you need them. Search firm overseen by a group with more business leaders than administrators is the better way to find the best candidate.
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McGarity has only done as he was told. The reason McGarity is still on board is that he does his masters’ bidding. If everything blows up he will be the sacrificial lamb to protect B-M and the anonymous alumni who pull his strings. Those are the guys I want gone.
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