Greg McGarity can laugh about it now, the fact that he had planned to “go home early” on the afternoon of Oct. 7. The Bulldogs’ athletic director said he had just left his regular monthly meeting with President Jere Morehead on the UGA campus that day when he called Carla Williams, Georgia’s executive associate athletic director, “to check in on things.”
“She said, ‘can you stop by the office,’” McGarity recounted Tuesday.
As it turned out, UGA’s compliance office had received an email that day from an individual claiming that Todd Gurley, the Bulldogs’ star tailback, had accepted money to autograph memorabilia and that the emailer had proof in the form of a video.
Three hours later — after technical difficulties delayed the video’s arrival — McGarity, Williams and members of UGA’s compliance staff watched it.
“It was bothersome,” McGarity said.
That video — believed now to have been sent by Northwest Georgia memorabilia dealer Bryan Allen — showed Gurley signing autographs inside a car with Allen and another man. UGA immediately launched an internal investigation which, two days later, resulted in the Bulldogs indefinitely suspending Gurley.
This was big news. At the time, Gurley was the consensus front-runner in the Heisman Trophy race.
But while it would be another 13 days before Georgia would ask the NCAA for Gurley’s reinstatement and a full three weeks before the Bulldogs would learn that his appeal had been denied, McGarity said UGA’s internal investigation actually lasted only two days.
“We were able to gather information in a hurry,” said McGarity, answering questions about case for the first time Tuesday. “That information was verified and Todd acknowledged it.”
UGA continues to decline The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s requests to review the investigation documents, as per state and federal open-records laws. The school insists those records should remain private under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act law (FERPA), which is designed to protect the student’s academic and personal information.
But the NCAA revealed in its news release that Gurley had accepted more than $3,000 in improper benefits from memorabilia dealers over two years. McGarity verified that information was provided to the NCAA via its investigation.
“The evidence was there,” McGarity said. “The numbers were accurate. That’s all there is to it.”
Georgia applied to the NCAA for Gurley’s reinstatement Oct. 22, or 10 days before the Bulldogs were scheduled to play Florida. At that point Gurley had sat out games against Missouri and Arkansas with the hope that college athletics’ governing body would deem the two-game absence sufficient and allow him to return for the Florida game.
The NCAA’s athlete reinstatement committee actually added two games to Gurley’s suspension and required Gurley make monetary restitution and do 40 hours of community service.
“We always knew (a four-game suspension) was in play,” McGarity said. “We were hoping maybe some of the mitigating circumstances, as far as honesty, the way the institution conducted the case, would help mitigate that. But as you can see from their report, it actually lessened the penalty.”
The NCAA’s report said: “Additional withholding was strongly considered because the violations occurred over multiple years with multiple individuals, and the student received extensive rules education.”
Gurley has now missed Georgia’s past three games and will miss Saturday’s game at Kentucky. He will return for the Bulldogs’ next home game, Nov. 15 against No. 3 Auburn. Despite the missed time, Gurley continues to lead the team in rushing with 773 yards and eight touchdowns.
Gurley’s absence hadn’t cost Georgia a victory until Saturday, when the then-No. 11 Bulldogs (6-2, 4-2 SEC) lost to unranked Florida (4-3, 3-3 SEC) 38-20 in Jacksonville. Even though Gurley’s teammates said they are thoroughly educated about what constitutes a rules violation and said Gurley knew what he was doing could ultimately cost the team, they said they are not mad at him.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had that feeling where, ‘man, Todd let us down,’” senior quarterback Hutson Mason said Tuesday. “It’s just kind of one of those things where, in this day and age in college football, it’s like the biggest struggle for college athletes right now. You’ve got somebody coming up and offering you thousands of dollars and you don’t come from anything or you don’t have anything. You don’t have money to go do the things you want to do. For anybody that’s a college athlete, that’s hard.”
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