ATHENS — Georgia president Michael Adams offered an unexpected answer when asked at his monthly cabinet meeting Thursday about the contract status of coach Mark Richt.
“If we win Saturday, he’ll be back,” Adams told media assembled there, “and if we lose we’re going to fire him.”
He was joking, of course.
“I would be surprised if Mark Richt weren’t the coach here next year,” Adams said as the laughter subsided.
Richt has 2 1/2 years remaining on a contract that pays him close to $3 million annually. There were questions about his long-term future as the Bulldogs’ coach when the team followed last season’s 6-7 record by losing its first two games this season.
But Georgia has won its 10 games since and won the SEC East. The 14th-ranked Bulldogs (10-2, 7-1 SEC) play No. 1-ranked LSU (12-0, 8-0) for the SEC title at 4 p.m. Saturday. It will be the fourth appearance in the title game for Richt, who has now led the Bulldogs to 10 or more wins in seven of his 11 seasons as Georgia’s coach.
A contract extension for Richt would seem imminent. The contact period for recruiting began Nov. 18, and UGA administrators aren’t likely to send Richt on the road with a contract of fewer than four or five years.
Adams said he’s now hearing from fans who want UGA to expedite the renegotiation process and extend Richt as soon as possible.
“I get amused at this sometimes, frankly,” Adams said. “I actually have had suggestions from some of the same people over the last four months that, after the 0-2 start, were asking the AD and me to terminate him, who are now upset that we haven’t renewed the contract.
“So you don’t respond to these things emotionally through the season. You try and get a couple or three weeks away from a season. Give us a little time to review the whole process, but I would be surprised if Mark Richt weren’t the coach here next year. We’ll just wait and see what the AD decides to do.”
Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity, who ultimately will make the call on the matter, maintained his stance Thursday that he would not address Richt’s contract status until after Saturday’s game.
A tough ticket
The SEC Championship game has been a tough ticket for UGA fans. According to Tim Cearly, the Bulldogs’ ticket-operations manager, the Bulldogs had requests for more than 43,000 tickets and only 16,000 to give. That’s more requests than they had in their last appearance in the title game in 2005, when they had a little over 30,000, he said.
That made ticket distribution a particularly challenging endeavor. “It has meant some late nights and some early mornings,” Cearly said. “There was at least one 3 a.m. night in there. But overall we were able to accommodate most of our requests.”
They just didn’t get as many tickets as they were hoping for. Here’s how Cearly said it broke down:
Ten percent of the tickets (1,600) were allotted to UGA students, who got a price break at $55 (face value is $80). But with more than 7,000 student requests, many of them went away disappointed. They were distributed according to credit hours, so only students with 98 or more hours — mainly seniors — received tickets.
Donors needed $100,000 or more in contributions to the Hartman Fund to receive six tickets and $50,200 to $99,999 for four tickets. Those at $50,199 and below got two tickets and the cutoff was at $12,800.
Anybody below $38,000 in contributions got upper-level seats.
Bowl ticket deadline
Meanwhile, Cearly is in the process of handling bowl ticket requests. The deadline for Hartman Fund donors is 5 p.m. Friday.
The Bulldogs will end up in one of four bowls: The Sugar Bowl if they win Saturday, or either the Capital One, Outback or Cotton if they lose. In the case of a loss, Georgia would be competing with Arkansas and South Carolina for the latter three bowl slots.
Georgia would get 17,000 tickets for the Sugar, but just 12,000 for the other three. Any unclaimed by donors will go on sale to the public after bowl announcements are made Sunday.
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