Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity announced his retirement this week, effective at the end of 2020. Senior Deputy Director of Athletics Josh Brooks will step in on an interim basis until McGarity’s successor takes the job. McGarity has served in the role since 2010 and has presided over a large increase in the department’s revenues and budget, and he’s overseen coaching changes in nearly all of Georgia’s major programs.

It’s possible that Georgia’s next athletic directory is already part of the organization – Brooks himself is expected to be a candidate. It might also be a man or woman with no ties to the school. Familiarity with certain candidates might bias us one way or the other, and it would be doing Georgia a disservice not to consider qualified outside candidates for a job that will surely attract attention from across the nation. How many lists did Dan Lanning or Todd Monken appear on before Kirby Smart selected them as coordinators? So rather than get bogged down in the pros and cons of name that might or might not exist on Georgia’s list, I’ll focus more on the issues waiting for the AD and what might be expected from the ideal candidate.

Maintaining the strengths: Before getting on with grandiose plans for the future, the next AD must identify and maintain the areas in which Georgia athletics is strong. That goes for personnel but also processes in areas like athletic performance, academic support, compliance, and financial responsibility. Georgia has largely avoided scandal under McGarity, though the 2014 NCAA reprimand of the swimming and diving program wasn’t a good look for anyone. It’s a low bar to expect character, transparency, and consideration of the student-athletes from an athletics administration, but have you looked around lately?

The bank account: Georgia’s reserve fund has been a point of contention for years, but that financial strength has allowed the athletic department to weather the pandemic without the cuts to personnel or programs that we’ve seen even at other P5 schools. The introduction of the Magill Society has been a success to the point that even that exclusive group of donors has been subdivided into still higher tiers of support. Private funds were successfully raised for three major facilities projects. We won’t pretend that these projects didn’t happen without some conflict, and hesitation to invest in the football program was a major friction point towards the end of the Mark Richt era. McGarity’s legacy must own that period too. The need for a healthy reserve has to be balanced against securing the resources Georgia’s programs need to be competitive. On the whole, the next AD will be starting on a firm financial footing.

Performance: You play to win the game, and on that front Georgia hasn’t been doing as well. Sure, football seems to be in great shape, and that ends the discussion for a lot of stakeholders. Other sports haven’t been doing as well, and that includes sports that have traditionally propped up Georgia’s all-sport ranking. The new AD won’t have long before there are decisions to make from the basketball programs on down. Even within successful programs like football, coaches and staff must be identified, retained, and compensated. An AD’s legacy is often shaped by the personnel decisions he or she makes, and it doesn’t just affect wins and losses. A series of poor hiring decisions can leave even SEC programs responsible for large buyouts and without financial flexibility.

Advocacy: Representing Georgia’s interests beyond the hedges is an important part of the athletic director’s job. Whether accurate or not, the perception is that McGarity was often too deferential and unwilling to stand against scheduling changes and other policies that affected Georgia. This is touchy – we see the outcomes, but we frequently don’t know the discussions that went on and options for alternatives. It wasn’t McGarity’s style to raise a stink in traditional or social media, and I suspect that’s what some critics would have preferred. How assertive will the next AD be with the conference and NCAA, and how visible will that advocacy be?

Leadership for change: Some major change could soon be coming to college athletics. Name / Likeness / Image (NIL) policies and laws that allow student-athletes to earn money are already being crafted and passed. More universal and permissive transfer policies are being discussed, and we could soon see a one-time transfer allowance. More importantly, 2020 has raised the profile of college athletes as agents for social change. How will the next AD position Georgia in these areas? Will Georgia be one of the driving forces at the forefront of change, or will it be dragged along? Support for initiatives like “Dawgs For Pups” and voting registration on campus was impressive this year, and the next AD should continue that support.

Facilities: McGarity completed or began several significant facilities projects, and those projects included several highly-visible (and arguably long-overdue) buildings. The indoor practice facility is the obvious example. The West Endzone project at Sanford Stadium addressed needs for recruiting and locker room space. The under-construction Butts-Mehre annex will provide room for the football program’s growing footprint. Stegeman Coliseum, Foley Field, and the tennis complex have seen or are undergoing significant renovations. It’s been an impressive investment in facilities that will benefit many of Georgia’s programs.

What’s left to do? That’s kind of the point. Seth Emerson and others have beat the drum for several years about the need for a more comprehensive master plan to serve as a vision going forward. Such a plan would provide a clearer vision to potential donors and guide future spending. As Emerson put it, the goal of a master plan “is not to go willy-nilly into the arms race and waste money.” We’ve seen Alabama take a step in this direction a couple of years ago with their $600 million facilities plan. Georgia will have different needs and priorities, but that’s the sort of focused vision that’s necessary in the next generation of facilities projects at Georgia.

Customer Experience: It’s likely that any facilities plan will include the crown jewel itself: Sanford Stadium. In the past a stadium project meant increased capacity. That’s no longer the case. Even before the pandemic, the growing appeal of watching from home was eating away at the demand to attend games. New stadium construction now focuses more on amenities rather than capacity, and renovations are following suit. Recent work on Bryant-Denny Stadium at Alabama resulted in a modest decrease in capacity. As the report notes, “Alabama’s shift to a slightly smaller capacity follows the trend of colleges pulling back from the arms race for the biggest while shifting to emphasize the premium experience.”

That “premium experience” is the watchword now. Georgia clumsily dipped its toe into the premium experience game last year with the Magill-only beer garden. It’s likely that any significant project at Sanford Stadium will include (if not exclusively) amenities aimed at enhancing the experience for high-dollar fans. That’s not meant to be cynical. If there’s a softness in the demand for stadium expansion, revenue growth is most likely to come from the top levels of donors, and keeping those donors happy will be a high priority. Any modern stadium or arena is built with that consideration in mind, and now renovation projects like Alabama’s are attempting to retrofit older stadiums with similar amenities.

But beyond that we know there are improvements to be made that can benefit all fans, and many of them don’t require construction equipment. Josh Brooks, McGarity’s interim replacement, spearheaded several of those improvements. Grab-and-go concessions has been a big improvement. We can also expect to see a deeper dive into paperless tickets and moving other elements of the game experience onto mobile devices. That’s the norm now for professional sports, and the pandemic has hastened a move towards a touchless experience. Brooks and McGarity have both been willing to listen to and engage with fan feedback. That’s to their credit and a good first step. We know all of the familiar complaints about Sanford Stadium from parking to bathrooms to crowded concourses to poor cell service. The next AD will hear about them too. Will there be action?