ATHENS — Mike Gottfried says Georgia fans should be careful what they wish for with regard to offensive coordinator Mike Bobo. The longtime college football analyst predicts Bobo likely will leave the Bulldogs sooner than they might think — and it won’t be under the circumstances they might expect.
“They won’t have him long,” said Gottfried, a former head coach at Pittsburgh and Kansas, among others, and a former ESPN sportscaster. “He will be a head coach real soon.”
Gottfried’s comments illustrate the disjoint there is between fans’ perceptions and what some people associated with college football think. To a large contingent in the Bulldog Nation, he is “Bobo the Buffoon” and “Mike Boo-Boo.” He’s characterized in fan forums and chat rooms as a dimwit who is overmatched weekly against the SEC’s powerful defensive minds. But inside college football Bobo in a much different light.
They point to the yards and points that Georgia puts up every year, to Bobo’s development of high-caliber quarterbacks and skill players, to his cunning and effectiveness as a recruiter.
Most important, Bobo’s boss is quite pleased with him.
“Well, I like what he does or he wouldn’t be there,” coach Mark Richt said succinctly.
Indeed, Georgia’s offense has been very productive under Bobo’s leadership. Since succeeding Richt as the team’s play-caller and being promoted to offensive coordinator in 2007, the Bulldogs have averaged 392.5 yards and 31.6 points per game. That represents an increase of 4.5 yards and 3.3 points over what the team was doing when Richt was calling the shots on a game-by-game basis.
Nevertheless, a quick Google search pulls up Facebook pages with unflattering names as “Fire Bobo The Clown,” and “Keep Richt, Fire Bobo.” None of which seems to faze Bobo at all.
“I don’t pay any attention to that stuff,” he said, which is the approach he should take, Richt said.
“We don’t worry about that,” Richt said with a laugh. “Anybody who is a play-caller is 100 percent guaranteed to be criticized and critiqued and helped and anything else you can imagine. It comes with the territory.
“I don’t know how many years I called plays at Florida State. We had a pretty good run of victories and offensive output, but I caught heck all the time. I had one guy that was the president of the ‘Evict Richt Club.’”
Still, there is evidence that Bobo is under-appreciated even inside the glassy walls of Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall. Despite being a relative veteran in the volatile SEC coaching community — 12 years at one school, five as a coordinator — Bobo is not paid well relative to his peers.
Bobo’s current salary of $325,000 per year ranks in the bottom half of the SEC and well behind those of relative newcomers such as Alabama’s Doug Nussmeier ($590,000), Auburn’s Scot Loeffler ($500,000) and Florida’s Brent Pease ($500,000), according to published reports.
Meanwhile, the trend in college football is for coordinators to have multiyear contracts. UGA defensive coordinator Todd Grantham is about to sign his second three-year deal at more than twice Bobo’s salary. Bobo’s latest one-year deal expires June 30.
Bobo refuses to discuss his contract status or any job offers (there have been “a few,” he said).
“That’s not my style,” Bobo said. “That’s just not who I am.” A father of five, Bobo said he prefers “to just do my job.”
He is represented by Birmingham-based attorney Russ Campbell, whose client list includes a number of high-profile head coaches.
“Certainly the current trend has been toward multiyear contracts [for assistants],” Campbell said. “But like Mike, it’s just not our practice to talk about negotiations at all in the press. It just leaves a bad taste in the school’s mouth, and it’s just not the way we do business. So I can’t confirm or deny that any negotiations are underway.”
Gottfried believes Bobo’s simply a victim of staying in the same place a long time.
“Sometimes it’s like when I see some of my former players, I still see them as 18 years old, and they might be 35 or 40,” Gottfried said. “I think the fans still see him as that young quarterback.”
