OU Mens Head Golf Coach leaves for Georgia Tech

Sam Humphreys
@SamHumphreys34

People asking my thoughts on Ryan Hybl leaving OU to go to Georgia Tech.

First off, I haven’t reported on this story at all, and honestly don’t want to, because I have huge respect for all parties involved. But I have heard multiple sides of the story from multiple people that know what they are talking about, so here’s what I think went down, and y’all can take it or leave it:

(Again, this is just my opinion based on conversations I’ve had with people in the golf world. Who knows, maybe none of this is factual.)

In November, legendary coach, Bruce Heppler, announces his retirement from Georgia Tech after 31 years.

In February, legendary coach, Chris Haack announced his retirement from the University of Georgia, where Hybl played.

Georgia would’ve been Hybl’s dream job, but Georgia knew they didn’t want to pay a golf coach what Hybl was worth, so they never even reached out to Hybl, which is a complete mistake by Georgia. Not only is there a chance Hybl might’ve taken the Georgia job for less money than they thought, there’s also a chance Hybl took Georgia’s lack of interest as a slap in the face.

Georgia Tech comes in and offers Hybl way more money than he’s making at OU (some say double his salary at OU, we will see).
This also gave Hybl a chance to move back to his home state of Georgia.
And maybe most importantly knowing how competitive Hybl is, this gave him an opportunity to stick it to Georgia who never even reached out.

The rumors of OU cutting Hybl’s salary in half were bogus. Even Hybl said in his letter that Denny/OU did everything to try to keep his family in Norman. And there’s a chance Hybl didn’t care about the money, and just wanted to go back home to his home state regardless of money.
But there’s also a chance, that if GT DID offer Hybl $600,000-$650,000 a year, that OU didn’t want to pay Hybl $750,000 a year to keep him.
Again, those numbers are just going off of the “GT offered Hybl double his salary” rumors. Just using that as an example of what could have happened. Those figures could be way off, I have to clue.

Either way, it’s not the best look for a new athletic director at OU to lose who a lot of people consider the best coach in the sport, regardless of circumstances.

HOWEVER, Johnathan Moore is a good coach, and I think he will do a good job. It’s just tough following the best coach in program history.

It’s weird:
Now you will have Hybl coaching for the school he played for’s biggest rival.
And you will have Moore coaching for the school he played for’s biggest rival.

All in all, I wish nothing but the best for Coach Hybl, and OU fans should too. He turned a program that was dead into a national powerhouse, and now he gets to go back home to his home state. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Not sure we will ever again see a bigger shake up than this in college golf. And that’s because Hybl is that good.

Georgia Tech should be over the moon, because they are about to have major success.