If it hasn’t happened already, J Batt’s world likely is about to shrink considerably. The new Georgia Tech athletic director has about a month to make what may be the most important decision he’ll make in his tenure – choosing who he will hire to be the Yellow Jackets’ new football coach.
“It’s a very high-pressure period of time,” a former power-conference athletic director said. “I’m sure that J is not sleeping a lot because you’ve got to get it right.”
Batt, who took office Oct. 24, was the end product of a search that was quickened out of school President Ángel Cabrera’s desire to give the new AD time to watch the team under the direction of interim coach Brent Key and get a feel for the program’s needs. Undoubtedly, another advantage of getting Batt on the job well before the end of the season is to allow him to begin the actual search. It begins with what the former AD called “the agent underground” – back-channel conversations between search firms hired by the school and agents and others who can speak on behalf of coaches.
“I’m sure there’s a lot of that going on,” he said.
When he has led coaching searches, Georgia Southern AD Jared Benko has recognized that there’s little time for much else besides the search.
“You get extremely hyper-focused,” he said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I have the ability to do that, which is good and bad, where I get tunnel vision, and I’m locked in on it.”
Benko is a useful model to examine how Batt may be approaching his search for Tech. A year ago, Benko fired Eagles coach Chad Lunsford after four games, the same point in the season when Cabrera dismissed both coach Geoff Collins and athletic director Todd Stansbury in September. It was even the same date, Sept. 26. Working purposefully, Benko was able to find a new coach – former USC coach Clay Helton – before the 2021 season ended.
“Myself and the search committee busted our tails and ultimately ended up with an outcome we’re very, very happy with,” Benko said.
That midseason coaching change, an increasingly common practice, gave Benko an invaluable head start that also could serve Batt and Tech well.
“The prevalent thought that comes back to mind is, the more time you have, in my opinion, the better chance you have to mitigate additional risk or make a rushed decision,” Benko said.
Typically, coaches have been fired in the first couple of days after a team’s final regular-season game. That leads to a search that might last a week. It can be a frantic process. Other schools also are hiring coaches and may be competing for the same candidates.
The early signing period, in which most high-school prospects make their college decisions official, also has increased the pressure. Where previously high-school recruits signed on the first Wednesday in February, most of the signings now take place during the early signing period, which this year is Dec. 21-23.
The reduced time frame places a premium on getting a coach in place quickly – and giving him the opportunity to start hiring a staff – so he and his assistants can evaluate prospects committed to the former staff, give the possibly wavering prospects a chance to get to know them and potentially bring in more recruits.
The transfer portal bears a similar pressure. A new coach, particularly one coming into a situation (like Tech’s) where a coach has been relieved because of subpar performance, will need to start finding new talent to bring in and also quickly develop relationships with existing players so they don’t leave the team through the portal.
“I think (retaining current players) often gets overlooked, and it’s focused on the early signing period,” Benko said. “But I think equally or more important is keeping guys or re-recruiting guys on your roster.”
Last year, there were 14 coaches hired at power-conference schools. The latest was made by Dec. 11 – Oregon’s Dan Lanning – and that was a situation where the Ducks’ coach (Mario Cristobal) was hired away Dec. 6.
“There’s just a lot of things, I would say important tasks and responsibilities, that converge within a two-week period,” Benko said.
But, by having made his decision to change coaches well before the end of the season, Benko didn’t have the same rushed process as some of his colleagues.
Benko didn’t necessarily make the decision early in the season for that reason, saying that he did it because he had determined that the team was not set up for sustained success with Lunsford, who was 28-21 in his tenure. He also subscribed to wisdom attributed to former Florida AD Jeremy Foley – what must be done tomorrow, must be done today.
Regardless, the decision did afford Benko far more time than most of his colleagues. Benko had the time to speak with 17 candidates for at least an hour, he said, which would have been highly unlikely had Georgia Southern’s search started at the end of the regular season.
“When we made (the change) at the end of week 4 going into week 5, I had time on my side,” he said. “So to me, I was going to grind it out. I was going to leave no stone unturned.”
Beyond that, when the field was reduced to a final six and Benko identified Helton as his leading candidate, he was able to drill down on him to make as informed a decision as he could in a way that he probably could not have in a more typical search. Benko conferred with people who Helton worked with at USC, recruiting experts, former players and even media members who knew him.
“What you end up doing is trying to really compile a 360 (degree) evaluation, or a viewpoint, on each coach,” Benko said. “And you can only do that with time. Otherwise, it’s tough.”
From his digging, Benko came to the conclusion that Helton was an elite recruiter, understanding his skill in a more meaningful way than if Benko merely studied recruiting rankings. He also determined that there were factors beyond his control at USC that limited his success, and that from a character standpoint, Helton was someone who Benko wanted to lead the football program. Benko took note, for instance, when a former player of Helton’s told Benko that he would take a bullet for his coach. Those gleanings, in turn, led to Benko being able to have more focused conversations with Helton.
With extra time, Benko was able to have an in-depth conversation with Helton about the foundation that he and his wife, Angela, established to help homeless youth in Los Angeles.
“I’m at the point in my career where I want to align myself with people that have shared values and shared viewpoints relative to leading and inspiring young men and women – in this case young men,” Benko said. “I found out our values were aligned very tightly.”
Georgia Southern announced its hire of Helton on Nov. 2, about five weeks after the firing of Lunsford and 25 days before the final Saturday of the regular season last year. Helton’s case was different in that he was not an employed coach at that point, enabling him and Benko to move more quickly.
Batt does have some possible candidates who, as with Helton last year, are not coaching. They include former Virginia coach Bronco Mendenhall, former Alabama-Birmingham coach Bill Clark and former Carolina Panthers coach Matt Rhule. Clark has interest in the job, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Mendenhall would seem a fit from the perspective that he is considered a builder who likely would not be turned off by Tech’s academic rigor, and perhaps even would be intrigued by it. But he might not want to coach against Virginia. Rhule has a strong resume, having built winning programs at Baylor and Temple. However, he is close friends with Collins, which for him might cross Tech off his list. Clark pulled off an ultimate building job. He was coach at UAB when it dropped football after the 2014 season, then built it back for a 2017 restart. The Blazers went 43-20 from 2017-21 before Clark announced his retirement in June because of debilitating problems with his back. After some time off, he wants back in.
Batt can use this time to reach out to those candidates and gauge interest. There may be other candidates at the top of Batt’s list, a group that could include Coastal Carolina coach Jamey Chadwell, East Carolina coach Mike Houston and Alabama offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien, but it would seem worth the time to have a conversation.
Regardless, it won’t be a surprise if Tech has its new coach within a few days of the Georgia game Nov. 26. Last year, there were eight power-conference schools that made midseason changes. All of them had hired coaches by the Tuesday after the final Saturday of the regular season.
Benko thinks that, had his search gone in the direction of a coordinator or a sitting head coach, it’s conceivable that the two sides could have reached an agreement, signed a memorandum of understanding and sworn all sides to secrecy until the end of the regular season. An agent who represents several power-five football and basketball coaches told the AJC that he has had clients who were sitting head coaches who’ve had agreements to take jobs at new schools before the end of the season, keeping them quiet until after the season was over.
“At the end of the day, once you identity that top person and y’all come to an agreement for both sides that it’s a great partnership, I think after that you work through all the logistics that comes along with it,” Benko said.
This, of course, is not to say that Batt has done this, or will. Key could be a candidate, particularly if he can guide the Jackets to additional wins.
Regardless, Batt will need to move decisively. He does have an advantage in that he may be the only ACC athletic director in the market for a new head coach. But there also are five other power-conference teams that are shopping (Arizona State, Auburn, Colorado, Nebraska and Wisconsin), and undoubtedly there will be more.
While he is a first-time AD, Batt does have experience helping with coaching searches at two previous places of employment, East Carolina and Alabama. At East Carolina, he especially was involved in the hire of Pirates baseball coach Cliff Godwin, who has led his team to four NCAA Tournament super-regional appearances in eight seasons.
At Alabama, AD Greg Byrne told the AJC, Batt had a hand in every coaching search that Byrne has conducted since Batt joined the staff in June 2017. That includes the hire of men’s basketball coach Nate Oats, who led the Crimson Tide to the 2021 regular-season and conference championships and took the Tide back to the NCAA Tournament in 2022.
At his introductory news conference Oct. 17, Batt deflected questions about the coaching search, saying he had to first figure out where his office and the coffee machine were before he could begin to tackle the search. It wasn’t just a joke, apparently.
“The man can drink coffee,” Byrne said.
Two weeks in, Batt has presumably figured out where to get his caffeine fix. At this point, he’s going to need it.
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