Two assistant coaches receive planned raises

ATHENS — Whether its football team plays a season this year remains to be seen in the coming week or so, but Georgia’s athletic department has returned to business as usual, as several coaches and administrators received pay increases this month.

Assistant football coaches Todd Hartley and Dell McGee each received salary increases in July, according to documents turned over to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in response to a recent open-records request. Hartley, who coaches tight ends, received a $100,000 raise to $400,000 annually. McGee, who is the Bulldogs’ rungame coordinator and running backs coach, received a $25,000-a-year increase, to $675,000.

Sports-medicine director Ron Courson also received a raise to $260,000. Courson, of course, is having to oversee the Bulldogs’ COVID-19 testing program and safety protocols as well as serving on the SEC’s return- to-competition committee.

Other athletic administrators also received raises, including longtime player-programs director Bryant Gantt ($175,000) and Matt Hibbs ($125,000), who was promoted in June to assistant athletic director of compliance. Hibbs has overseen football compliance for the past two years. He held a similar position at Ohio State before coming to Georgia.

Georgia Athletic Director Greg McGarity said nothing should be read into the pay increases being processed this month.

“These are commitments that were made pre-COVID that we just followed up on lately,” he said. “There was a time there when we couldn’t really do anything (with salaries). I don’t want anybody to think Georgia’s spending all this money. Most of it was contractual anyway. These are all pre-COVID adjustments that already had been agreed upon.”

Georgia athletics had limited its expenditures to “critical spending” since the onset of the pandemic in mid-March. UGA was able to avoid furloughs in June when the state House approved a $26 billion budget that was later approved by Gov. Brian Kemp.

The SEC is expected to vote in the next week or so on whether to proceed with a full football season as scheduled or play a conference-only schedule, as the Pac-12 and Big Ten have chosen to do. The Bulldogs have been practicing since July 15, along with other SEC teams.