From Dooley to Donnan to Smart: UGA’s Recruiting Process, Part I

When Vince Dooley left Auburn as an assistant to head up Georgia’s football program in December of 1963, the 31-year-old coach was quite cognizant of the fact that high school football in his new state of residence had recently reached heights never attained. Accordingly, Dooley took action by creating a new position on his staff: head of recruiting, or recruiting director/coordinator. He filled it with the man who seemed like a natural fit for the job.

“When I came to Georgia, I decided to do what the previous coaching administration hadn’t really done, and that’s really concentrate on recruiting the state, focusing on signing the very best from the state,” Dooley recently informed UGASports.com. “The state of Georgia had just reached the stage of having really good football—better than ever before. And, at the time, nobody knew the state better than Sterling Dupree.”

Dupree, who was the Bulldogs’ backfield coach from 1950 through 1960 under Wally Butts, had been an All-Southern fullback at Auburn in the early 1930s. He later was an assistant coach for the Tigers when Joel Eaves, who, as Georgia’s athletic director would hire Dooley, played at Auburn, as well. After three seasons as the Florida Gators’ chief football scout, Dupree was lured back to Georgia to emphasize recruiting the home state and particularly in South Georgia.

The football recruiting process implemented a half-century ago by Dooley and his staff created, not surprisingly. a sharp contrast to today’s methods.

“In those early days, we sent out a survey-like mailer to just about every head high school coach in the state, asking them to not only rank their top three players, but also the top three players they'd seen regardless of team,” Dooley said. “By doing that, we got to know all the state’s coaches rather well while determining the reliability of those coaches.”

After the returned surveys were analyzed, the Georgia coaching staff “took things from there,” according to Dooley. This included usually being wary of game film, which was generally of poor quality and often masked a prospect’s ability considering the competition he faced. Instead, the staff preferred to evaluate the prospects in person by visiting their teams’ practices, whereby they’d take note of the players’ measurements, speed times, lift amounts, etc.

Frank Inman, who had been Georgia’s offensive coordinator, replaced Dupree in 1974 as the person in charge of football recruiting. Several years later, and until the mid-1980s, a few Bulldog assistant coaches served the role while also being a position coach.

In 1986, Dooley again decided the head of recruiting should serve that position, and that position only—but, curiously, hired airline employee Bob Pittard to serve the role. While he was the vice president of the Gwinnett Bulldog Club, Pittard was employed by Eastern Airlines as an account executive and had never worked in collegiate athletics.

“Bob had worked only at Eastern, but he had such tremendous knowledge of not only recruits in Georgia, but also recruits in adjacent states. He had such a great love for recruiting and Georgia football,” Dooley said. “Since the assistant coaches were there to be the primary evaluators of high school talent, Bob’s main job was to coordinate all of their efforts.”

Worthy of mention, Georgia twice failed to rank in the top 20 in terms of national team recruiting in a three-year span from 1986-1988; the Bulldogs were ranked No. 11, No. 3, No. 7, and No. 11, respectively, in team recruiting from 1989-1992. While serving under head coach Ray Goff, Pittard resigned from his post towards the end of the 1993 season.

After Georgia went several years without a devoted recruiting coordinator position, per se, the Bulldogs hired Rodney Garner as their head of recruiting and defensive line coach immediately following the 1997 season. Garner had been at Tennessee for two seasons as its tight ends and offensive tackles coach, along with being primarily credited with the Volunteers finishing No. 2 and No. 1, respectively, in national team recruiting in 1996 and 1997.

“When we brought in Rodney in ’98, he immediately began implementing some of the things Tennessee was doing recruiting-wise, while continuing to do what Georgia had done,” said Jim Donnan, Georgia’s head coach from 1996-2000. “Garner was more like a recruiting ‘coordinator’—a position Georgia really had not had in some years.”

Notably, after it finished no better than No. 18 in national team recruiting from 1995 through 1997, Georgia ranked No. 5 and No. 10, respectively, in 1998 and 1999, with Garner organizing and implementing the Bulldogs’ recruiting efforts.

While he served as its head coach, Donnan likened Georgia’s recruiting process to that of the NFL’s player evaluation of the time—and the Bulldogs’ recruiting coordinator position to that of a Pro Personnel Director.

“Pro scouts go out and evaluate college players, then they bring those evaluations back to the pro personnel guy, and compare them to the players they already have on their rosters. Coordinated by Garner, we had something similar going at the time when it came to recruiting,” Donnan said. “As a staff, we’d also ask ourselves for almost every prospect, ‘Could this guy help us defeat a Tennessee, or a Florida?’ And, if we decided he probably could not, we’d have a real hard time offering that guy.”

While recruiting services such as Rivals.com have grown steadily, and the use of social media platforms has been initiated and escalated, the recruiting process for college football programs has drastically changed over the last two decades. With this change has come an upheaval in Georgia’s recruiting results, comparatively speaking.

Accordingly, after it finished unranked (in top-20 or top-25, depending on year) eight times in national team recruiting over a 25-year span from 1976-2000, Georgia has ranked no lower than No. 16 for 20 consecutive years (2001-2020). What’s more, the Bulldogs’ average annual recruiting ranking the last two decades is approximately at No. 7—and 14 times during the last 20 years, Georgia has ranked in the top seven in recruiting—including No. 1 finishes the last three years (2018-2020).

Within the next few days, UGASports.com will publish Part II of “From Dooley to Donnan to Smart: UGA’s Recruiting Process,” whereby we speak to an inside source who details Georgia’s current methods of recruiting.