McGarity's influence paying off for more than just football.

Earlier this year I posted about McGarity and the positve effects of McGarity on Mark Richt and the football team. Now this article does not directly state anything about McGarity. It actually gives all the credit to Andy Landers for instituting the program this season. However it is hard to believe that with Landers having coached women's basketball at Georgia for 32 seasons and never having put the emphasis on this before that it was not at least partially McGarity's doing. What makes it even better to me is that McGarity seems to have set it up to make it look like the entire idea was Landers. He is helping the coach improve his team but also helping out with the coach's PR.

This is coming on the heals of hearing about how our previous athletic director held back funds from people that Richt believed deserved more money despite the fact the program was was finacially one of the best in the country. In the article that talks mostly about how Richt paid out of his own pocket to give money to people he felt deserved it there is this bit

And regarding these extension talks now underway with McGarity, Richt indicated that the discussion wasn’t just about his own compensation.
“There are other things that we talk about too,” Richt said, “student-athlete welfare stuff or maybe we can do this or that. He might see something that he would like me to improve and I might say we want to work on some kind of facility issue. What I'm saying is we've just had some great talks, not only about extending my contract, but what can we do to be the 'Best in America' type talks too, which is exciting.”

Richt has in the past asked for certain things, like an indoor practice field, and it was pushed off or scaled down. Even when Richt finally did get the indoor practice field it was only a 20x60 yard field. In fact it was actually smaller than the recent indoor field built at Georgia Tech. With the facility being so new I doubt McGarity will push hard for another one to be built but I have a hard time believing he would have settled for something that is not even the best in the state. The short term effects have been seen with slimming down from the nutrition program, Richt having more time to concentrate on the field instead of off, and various other small things. I continue to expect that as time goes by the benefits of the changes made by McGarity will pay off more and not just for football but for the entire athletic program.