How Georgia athletics, SEC are trying to cast a wide net for hiring coaches, administrators

Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks wants to “grow the pipeline,” for coaches, ADs and administrators of the next generation.

To do that, he’s looked to some graduating students from underrepresented backgrounds to fill internships and assistant jobs to get their foot in the door, hiring former Bulldog athletes for roles in development and the business office.

In his more than three years as AD, Brooks has made 10 head coaching hires. Two of them—track coach Caryl Smith-Gilbert and soccer coach Keidane McAlpine—are Black.

“Every search for me is an open search,” Brooks said. “I want the best candidate for the University of Georgia, but I think when you truly have an open search, that’s when you get great candidates like Caryl Smith-Gilbert and Keidane McAlpine.”

Both came to Georgia from Southern Cal already having won national titles.

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McAlpine led the program to its first SEC tournament title and just its second Sweet 16. The men’s track team this indoor season is ranked No. 12 and the women No. 13 nationally.

The SEC in 2021 passed Bylaw 23 to “help guide hiring practices,” at schools for AD, head coaches and senior women’s administrators.

Southern Company chairman, president and CEO Chris Womack spoke to coaches, ADs and others at the league’s spring meeting last year “to help us to think about how we build and grow diversity within our staff and leadership ranks,” commissioner Greg Sankey said then. The conference also began an “opportunity forum,” program for emerging leaders from underrepresented groups to meet with chancellors, presidents, ADs and search firms.

A year earlier, SEC football and men’s and women’s basketball coaches along with ADs and others also spoke as a group about building diversity, particularly in leadership positions.

“For me and my family and our experience, diversity, equity and inclusion has just been a part of my life,” Mississippi State athletic director Zac Selmon, the first Black AD in school history, said at last year’s spring meeting. “Sport is the great equalizer of that. You get people from all over to go for a common goal. My Dad and uncles grew up at a time when the schools were still segregated and because of Brown vs. Board of Education they had an opportunity to go play sport. Then they went to college and then the NFL.”

The SEC has no Black head football coaches among its 16 schools. There are 16 out of 134 FBS schools, according to Foxsports.com after Georgia assistant Dell McGee’s hire at Georgia State.

Selmon said it’s constantly on his mind to have a diverse and inclusive team at the school, but as he worked his way up as an athletic administrator, he realized there were less and less people that looked like him.

He said Oklahoma’s Joe Castiglione and North Carolina’s Bubba Cunningham took a chance on him and credited the leadership at Mississippi State.

“We know the history of our state,” he said. “We know the history of the things that have happened, but we’ve got a great makeup now of programs, of staff that are really committed to doing things the right way.”

Selmon replaced John Cohen when he left to be AD at Auburn. He was among leaders at the time that helped change the state flag which contained a Confederate battle emblem.

Cohen called it a “pivotal moment not only in my career, but in my life.”

Cohen said he wants to make sure that qualified candidates “that represent all kinds of diversity,” are included in all searches. He said he talked with “several” minority candidates when Hugh Freeze was hired as football coach. He also reached out to the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches which gave him info.

Cohen said from listening to Womack his takeaway was “doing specific things is more important than ideology itself. You have to do more than talk. That really resonated with me.”