ATHENS – Ford Williams was director of major gifts in Clemson’s athletic department before coming to Georgia in 2017 to take on a similar role. In April, he succeeded Matt Borman as senior executive athletic director for development and became executive director of the Georgia Bulldog Club.
It is in those roles that Williams has worked alongside Kirby Smart over the past four years. To say he has been impressed with Georgia’s football coach in those environs would be an understatement.
“He’s as tireless a fundraiser as he is a tireless recruiter,” Williams said of Georgia’s sixth-year football coach. “He understands the importance of the connection with the individual donors, just as you do on the recruiting front. In terms of recruiting donors, he puts that same passion and energy into it, which is a tremendous asset to us.”
Borman concurs. He headed Georgia’s development office before leaving for LSU earlier this year. Borman didn’t call Smart a “closer,” per se, when it comes to seeking donations for his football program. But he acknowledged that nobody works a room of benefactors better.
“No doubt about it. He’s been a very important part of the fundraising process at UGA to build the facilities Georgia needed to catch up in the SEC,” Borman said of Smart. “He’s always willing to give us time. And then, when you get him in front of donors, I’d argue that there’s not a better fit in the country than that head coach and that donor base. It’s because he’s one of them, and he can get in front of them and be very comfortable, and the Georgia people love being around him.”
One of the many changes Smart initiated after becoming Georgia’s head coach in December 2015 was to do away with the traditional Bulldog Club tours. Those were the popular late-spring and summer annual rituals in which the Bulldogs’ football coach, basketball coach and maybe one from UGA’s lower-profile sports would make the rounds to Georgia cities such as Columbus, Macon, Savannah and Valdosta, and occasionally to a destination outside of state borders. There they would tell Georgia fans all about the coming season and share a funny anecdote or two over fried chicken, green beans and mashed potatoes.
Afterward, the football coach would linger for over an hour, posing for pictures with fans, signing autographs and exchanging small talk before being whisked away and catching UGA’s plane back to Athens.
Smart did that, too, his first year as coach. But by Year 2, those meetings were history. That put off a lot of fans, initially, but there was a method to Smart’s making-them-madness.
Smart exchanged those annual tours for smaller, more intimate gatherings of targeted groups of donors – or potential donors – within those same cities. In such settings, Smart could be more personable, get to know the individuals on a personal level and share with them exactly what his vision was – and needs were – for Georgia football.
“He makes everybody feels so comfortable,” Borman said of Smart in that environment. “I’ve never been in the room when he closed a recruit, but I’d imagine that’s why he’s so good at recruiting because he makes people feel comfortable, and you trust him.”
Smart also offers those donors access. One of the perks of joining the Magill Society, which is the UGA donor group that funds facility projects in exchange for football season-ticket priority, is they get invitations to attend Georgia’s practices and scrimmages. That will be the case again Saturday, when as many as 1,000 members of the group are expected to attend the Bulldogs’ first preseason scrimmage of 2021 at Sanford Stadium.
That’s a pretty nice fringe benefit considering those scrimmages are closed to the rest of the world – including the press. But Smart knows he needs never-ending support of Georgia’s donor base to fund his vision for the football program.
It’s another page that Smart took out of playbook for Alabama coach Nick Saban. Smart stood alongside the Crimson Tide’s legendary coach as Saban won four of his six national championships. He apparently was taking notes, especially in those early years.
“Nick probably did a little more of that (fundraising) when he first got here,” said Cecil Hurt, longtime sports columnist for the Tuscaloosa News and AL.com. “He doesn’t do as much of that now. He might commit to a few of those at the beginning of the year and hosts his annual celebrity golf tournament. But it’s a smooth-functioning machine around here now.”
That’s where Smart wants to get Georgia eventually. But the Bulldogs aren’t there yet.
While Georgia is close to completing $175 million in football facility construction and improvements over the past five years, the reality is Smart is not close to completing his wish list. Word is, he has his eye on the property next to the new football building that has been long occupied by the Spec Towns track-and-field complex. At least that’s what newly hired track coach Cheryl Smith Gilbert has been led to believe.
“I know Kirby wants our track land for football,” she said in an interview on radio station 680 The Fan. “Maybe we could talk about building a new stadium somewhere else, which would be great because then we can make it how we want it. I just see the upgrading of all the facilities that’s going on here right now, and I’m very impressed.”
There also is increased pressure to find more space for its academic support services. The Rankin Smith Academic Achievement Center on the corner of Sanford Drive and Smith Street is packed to the brim. Smart also is talking about expanding UGA’s space for behavioral medicine.
“That’s something I am working on this summer with my executive staff,” Georgia Athletic Director Josh Brooks said of future facility projects. “We’ll plan to present a strategic vision for facilities at our next board meeting (this fall). But the support we have for all our programs at Georgia is truly special.”
Whatever Smart wants or feels like Georgia needs to remain on the upper echelon of college football, one can be assured he has clear and well-thought-out plan that he will share with Brooks. Greg McGarity, UGA’s previous AD, said planning and presentation is one of Smart’s core strengths and sets him apart from other football coaches he has worked with in more than 40 years in collegiate sports administration.
“When he proposes something – ‘I’d like to do this or that’ – it is backed up with support documentation,” McGarity said. “He’d come to me and say, ‘I’d like to do this. Here’s why and I’ll show you.’ Or if he wanted to give an assistant a raise, he’d come in with a chart of what his peers are making. Everything was always very calculated. He’s got a business mind, and he approaches his job that way. He goes out and sells it.”
McGarity, who is executive director of the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, also shared a story about Smart coming to him once after two highly paid administrators had left UGA.
“Kirby got wind of that and asked me if he could hire four people and pay them equivalent,” McGarity said. “He was always mindful of the finances, which I really respected.”
Indeed, Smart received a finance degree from UGA’s prestigious Terry College of Business. He also holds a master’s from Florida State in physical education.
It was Smart’s academic pursuits as a Georgia football player that initially endeared him to UGA President Jere Morehead. Smart made the SEC academic honor roll all four years he played safety for the Bulldogs (1995-98). At the time, Morehead was a professor teaching legal affairs in the Terry College.
“I’ve watched him over the years,” Morehead told the AJC in 2018. “He has a level of maturity and intensity that I think is absolutely essential if you’re going to win at this level. He’s always thinking about what we need to do next in order to remain highly competitive. I don’t think he’s ever going to sit back and say, ‘Oh, we won the SEC championship last year so everything is good.’ He’s always going to be asking, ‘what do we need to do next to make ourselves more competitive.’”
Smart is still asking. And, for now at least, he’s still getting.
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