Maryland contacts former Georgia coach Mark Richt about vacancy

Glowing compliments for Richt came from UGA president Jere Morehead and athletic director Greg McGarity.

“I appreciate the opportunity of serving the University as well as considering any other options that may present themselves in the future”.

Mason said 15 years as a head coach is a considerable amount of time, and he thought Richt deserved at least one more year, or at least the opportunity to step down on his own terms.

Richt created lofty expectations for himself early on as Georgia’s head coach by winning SEC championships in 2002 and 2005. Richt won 74 percent of his games, the fifth-best mark among active coaches, behind Urban Meyer, Bob Stoops, Nick Saban and Gary Patterson. “I believe in the coaching staff that I’m going bring in here”, Campbell said in his introductory press conference.

“I just think that 15 years is a long time”, Richt said Monday.

“That’s the standard here”, Richt said.

“I said, ‘Be patient. To think that I had a part to play in that”.

A lot of that contempt would be released in the event he were to don the garnet and black, but the first reaction of most Gamecock fans to his name being floated as a prospect would universally be negative.

McGarity had praise for Richt, who was 145-51 with two SEC championships.

Smart, who is preparing for the SEC Championship game against Florida on Saturday, did not speak publicly to media members on Monday, and one of his players, Alabama linebacker Reggie Ragland, said he hadn’t heard anything from Smart about another job. He said he expected to hear about new opportunities “in the next few hours, next 24 to 48 hours”.

While Georgia was able to win four straight games against weaker teams, the school already made a decision to let go of Mark Richt. Mark has tremendous support.

McGarity announced that he will use a search firm to land Georgia’s next coach but said multiple times throughout the 30-minute conference that this event was about Richt. That is UGA’s second-highest win total and ninth-most by an SEC coach.

Mark Richt could be back coaching at a new Power Five job very quickly. Only Vince Dooley (201) won more games at Georgia. If things don’t go the way people want them to go, I can understand them being disappointed.

“It’s certainly the end of an era for a coach that’s done an incredible job running a program arguably better than any other coach when you look at the total body of work of the program, so for me”, added Ryan Sewell”. Damon Evans, the former Georgia director of athletics, is now the senior associate athletics director/chief financial officer for the Terrapins.

He previously coached as a graduate assistant at Florida State, then East Carolina as offensive coordinator, and Florida State from 1994 until he was hired at Georgia in 2001.