Mark Richt has a longstanding reputation as one of the nicest guys in the coaching business, and that image will only be strengthened with this revelation by the AJC that he doled out thousands of dollars from his own pocket to pay assistants and other personnel.
Richt made personal payments of more than $25,000 to coaches and support staff due to what he perceived as inadequate compensation for those individuals. Richt’s actions were determined to be secondary violations of NCAA rules regarding supplemental pay, according to a recent NCAA review of an lengthy internal investigation conducted by UGA.
According to those reports, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through the Freedom of Information Act, Richt paid former recruiting assistant Charlie Cantor $10,842 over an 11-month period through March of 2011, former linebackers coach John Jancek $10,000 in the summer of 2009 and $6,150 to director of player development John Eason in July of 2010. All of the payments were made by checks from Richt’s personal bank account after UGA’s previous athletic administration declined his requests for increased compensation for those parties.
Once upon a time, when Dabo Swinney was a first-year head coach at Clemson, he hatched a similar idea to pay various people under him who he believed deserved raises and bonuses and such. The plan was discovered and shot down by the athletics department.
You know this stuff probably goes on undetected at a lot of places. It's hard to imagine an NCAA violation that carries more favorable public-relations impact. As Mark Bradley of the AJC notes here, these revelations officially made Richt the world's coolest boss.
Some coaches have the reputation of being difficult to serve under. Richt just stamped himself as the coach you want to work for. We all knew he was a good guy, but this borders on sainthood. (”St. Mark of Athens, driver of Ford trucks and benefactor to unsung associates.”)
Some people might be surprised to hear that Georgia's administration was so reluctant to commit to raises that seem like a drop in the bucket. We're sort of in our own little bubble over here in Clemsonland, and it's easy to assume that all the big-boy schools in the big-boy SEC are unflinchingly committed to their football programs.
This story shows that other schools, even the ones who are supposedly printing money, have their own problems too. Sounds as if Richt didn't have the warmest or fuzziest relationship with his AD, the yet-to-be-disgraced Damon Evans.
LW
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