Damon Evans is probably going to get a few less Christmas cards this year.
Evans, 37, is Georgia's athletic director, a man who a year ago decided students needed to be in class. Even students who play sports.
So, he put together a new set of rules: He told every one of Georgia's 500 athletes that if they missed one class or tutoring session, they'd owe him $10; if they missed three, they'd miss 10 percent of their games. This prompted a bunch of coaches to give him funny looks.
Well, Evans' plan worked. In the first three weeks of the policy being enacted, beginning last January, Georgia athletes missed 46 classes -- a 90 percent improvement from the 421 they missed during the first three weeks of the previous semester. Also, more than half of Georgia's athletes finished the spring with a 3.0 GPA, while taking 184 more credits.
For two years, Evans has helped Georgia turn a bigger profit than any other school in the country. In three years as athletic director, Georgia has won six national titles. In the summer, he convinced the SEC that all its schools needed a uniform attendance policy for its sports. Yes, Evans is hardly the most popular guy right now.
"I know what we've done has maybe put some pressure on other athletic directors," Evans said carefully.
"Look, I don't know if all those reports compare apples to apples," he said, trying the diplomatic thing again. "I don't want to make it seem easy."
Too late. Evans was a 28-year old with a bachelor's degree in finance and a couple years at the SEC office when Vince Dooley convinced him to come back to Georgia. Dooley had recruited him when he was an all-state wideout in Gainesville, Ga., coached him a year before becoming the Bulldogs' athletic director, and in 1998, figured Evans could handle the athletic department's internal affairs. And when Evans said he wanted to completely scrap the budget system for a zero-based plan -- where, instead of percentage increases, coaches would argue each year for how much money they needed that year -- Dooley said, go ahead.
"Coach Dooley gave me a lot of leeway," Evans said. And the coaches? "They thought I was crazy," he admitted, breaking into a laugh. "There was a bit of a revolt." It wasn't the first.
With Dooley dragging him to high-level meetings, pushing him to get on the NCAA's management council and giving him nearly free rein to map Georgia's finances, Evans did all sorts of things staid athletic directors usually don't. He designed a strategy for tax-exempting financing of facilities; he pulled together $81 million for expansion and in December 2003, with Dooley's recommendation, he was hired as Georgia's AD. He took over the next July and told football coach Mark Richt he was going to make the Bulldogs a national brand. For Richt and the Dawgs, this means trips to Arizona State, Colorado, Oklahoma State and Oregon.
"Michigan, Notre Dame, Texas -- those are national programs that people know," Evans said. "This school, academically, is on par with very well-known institutions, and this program is historically in the top 10 in the Directors' Cup. There's no reason people shouldn't know us, too."
Athletic directors sure know the Bulldogs now. Evans, of course, isn't perfect. He kind of passed the buck when talk turned to his undistinguished tenure as a Georgia wideout. "It was an era of running backs!" he protested. "If it was third-and-10, we'd run!" he said. Like having Garrison Hearst for a teammate is an excuse.
He's a lousy golfer too, one who'd need to cheat to hit that supposed 20 handicap. Then again, that one might not be so bad. Since Evans has been out on the links with donors, fundraising has shot up and the athletic department closed out its largest-ever capital campaign a year early -- to the tune of seven years and $60 million. Winning at golf puts people in a generous mood, right?
The truth is, Evans knows exactly what he's got going for him and what Georgia has going for it. There's a reason Georgia's made $44 million the last two years, when less than 20 schools at least broke even. Just like there's a reason Evans is driven to be the best athletic director in the country. Evans is black. And much as he'd like that to be an afterthought, it's not. Not yet.
"I think of it all the time. I think of it every day," he said. "I know I've got to set a good example. I've got to go the extra yard, run the extra mile. I want to do everything better than the best, because if they feel comfortable saying, 'Here's a guy who's been successful,' then it could open the door for others."
As peerless as he's proving to be on the administration front, Evans really is peerless in this world. He's the first -- and only -- African-American athletic director in the SEC and one of only a handful in the country. He doesn't have any contemporaries in his age bracket, either. Heck, 20 of Georgia's 21 head coaches are older than him.
"There aren't very many people to talk to," he said. And then, somewhat resignedly, "But someone has to pave the way."
And so Evans is. For former athletes. For African-Americans. For big-dreaming young professionals, for creative thinkers and for administrators who believe transcripts ought to matter as much as stat sheets. So what if it means a few less trips to the mailbox this winter. To Georgia, Evans is Santa Claus.
Article taken from SI.com, written by Aditi Kinkhabwala. Additional information on the Sports Illustrated article can be found at: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/aditi_kinkhabwala/08/20/georgia.evans/index.html