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re: With Alleva out, does that make Ears McG the unquestionably worst AD in the SEC?

Posted on 4/20/19 at 8:57 am to
Posted by fibonaccisquared
The mystical waters of the Hooch
Member since Dec 2011
16898 posts
Posted on 4/20/19 at 8:57 am to
quote:

I’ll give him credit for having the patience (negligence?) to let Stricklin rebuild over a 5 year period to the point that we are starting to see quality results

Who knows with Crean but it’s not like firing Fox and Richt were ballsy decisions; Kirby was available and Richt had plateaued with a year of dysfunctional hires. Fox was the basketball version of Richt.

If I’m aggravated with McGarity for anything it’s his HORRIBLE PR skills, lack of any sort of master plan for the department, and allowing Foley and the tennis complex to languish so far behind conference competition that we have now lost the tennis national championship tournament for a while. I hope he will be the last of the Michael Adams hires to finally circulate our next year and be replaced with someone willing to spend the considerable resources at our disposal to be an innovative athletic department


quote:

Oh god, that’s the OTHER reason I despise McGarity: he and Carla Williams took the exact same approach with the NCAA by cooperating fully and left Gurley and AJ Green hanging out to dry as a result. They completely botched both cases


These bolded lines along with WG's comments above about minor sports hires are really where I think it's cemented his position at the bottom...

People want to look at the hires of Kirby and Crean as though they are wins for McG, but the simple facts on those are this:

1) Kirby was not even his choice... No matter what he says, the inner sanctum there basically made the call... "if he's available, we're not losing him..." Congratulations on not shitting in your hand and throwing it in the face of the people who decide whether you keep your job?

2) The timing of the Fox firing was problematic... rather than fire him 1-2 years prior when we already were seeing that the experiment was failing but we actually had a roster worth a shite, we waited until the best of the Fox talent was completely gone, so that Crean inherits a supremely flawed roster and poor recruiting pipeline for year one. Crean has done an incredible job of recruiting for this year, but given that both he and Matta had been sitting available the year prior, it's another instance where McG drags his feet and could have been more proactive. And I *liked* Fox as a person... I was not on the "fire Fox" train all along, but by end of 2016-2017 season, it was obvious he was not going to get it done.

3) Stricklin... This is one of the few times where McG's penny pinching, lack of any real plan, and failure to act has benefitted us...But it also meant 4 years of pretty shite results before seeing anything resembling progress. If there were more examples of McG being super "long vision", I'd give him credit here, but this is a classic blind squirrel finding a nut situation.

4) Minor sports... Petros Kyprianou has been an exceptional hire. Short of that, it's damn difficult to find a "win" for McG... nearly every minor sport program is in a worse spot than it was when McG took over.
In the 12 years prior to McG, Georgia was in the top 10 of the NACDA Director's Cup standings, 8 times, 3 of those in the top 5. Since McG taking over in 2010, we've finished in the top 10 twice, none in the top 5.

5) Facilities... Penny pinching is one of McG's strong suits... so we have a healthy cash reserve at all times, but are so unwilling to spend on facilities, that to Tyler's point, we've had issues with Foley, the tennis complex, Stegeman... and even the amazing indoor practice facility was done despite McG's objections/insistence that we shouldn't do it. I may not thank Pruitt for much, but he more or less put the wheels in motion on that train so much that McG couldn't really stand in the way. Stegeman's finally nicer on the inside, but you can only put so much lipstick on that pig... long term vision is not McG's strength and it shows in this area.

6) NCAA... UGA now has a history of just bending over and taking it (see: Harrick, Jim), so I don't *exclusively* fault McG for this... but Tyler's comment is spot on... Compare how Texas A&M handled the Manziel autograph situation to UGA's handling with Gurley. If time has proven anything, it's that cooperation with the NCAA does frick all for you... We cooperate fully and get fricked... UNC has one of the most rampant college academic scandals and basically says... "prove that we did anything wrong" and gets less than nothing.


To the USC fan who says Tanner, is South Carolina really worse off across the board since he's taken over? He came in 2012, right? Spurrier started to decline in production pretty quickly after 2013 and he pulled the trigger in 2015. I'd say that was pretty decisive... he targeted the right coaches (Kirby and Herman) but just couldn't get Smart since UGA knew they didn't want to lose him and I'd argue that Herman would have left nearly immediately for Texas either way. Muschamp may not be a perfect coach, but he was a hell of a plan B in my opinion. In hindsight, it's easy to say Lincoln Riley would have been a better hire, but tough to know one way or the other given the roster discrepancies he would have had, and again... good chance he bolts with Stoops abruptly retiring.

So where are the issues outside of that? Frank Martin... I think he was hired shortly before Tanner took the job? I'm guessing that the majority of issues with Tanner stem from USC's baseball decline? Chad Holbrook was a so-so coach... but he did manage to take you to the tournament including 2 super regionals. You've had Kingston for a little over 1.5 seasons now... You guys won a regional last year with a pretty meh roster by USC standards... This year isn't going great, but I'd hardly say it's 100% panic time. There is a laundry list of failures for McG... I admittedly don't know a ton about how things are in Columbia, but I'm hard pressed to find the same level of failures for Tanner as an outsider?
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