College Football Coach Hire Grades: Georgia State

Georgia State Panthers: Dell McGee

Why the job was open: Shawn Elliott had a decently successful run with Georgia State, there were some nice bowl wins and massive upset wins along the way. Despite another bowl win this past year, the program started to lose momentum and he left for the exact same job he had at South Carolina before he came to Georgia State. It’s becoming so difficult to succeed at G5s that their coaches would rather be P5 position coaches, panic!! Not quite, check out what Georgia State did next.

Coach Profile: Dell McGee was part of a lot of successful coaching staffs. He got his true start as an analyst for Gus Malzahn and Auburn when they made the championship in 2013. From there he joined Willie Fritz’s staff at Georgia Southern, and when Fritz left in 2015 McGee was the interim coach for an impressive 58-27 win in their Bowl game. He joined Kirby Smart’s Georgia staff and has been a RB coach for them ever since. He’s highly regarded as a recruiter.

Why he will succeed: Georgia State is in a prime location, the Atlanta area and really needed someone who can simply get them in the door. They were already winning but in this day and age it felt like they have a chance to step toward Sun Belt contention if recruiting got better. Dell McGee is certainly someone that can do that, he can certainly get them in some doors the Panthers program couldn’t get in previously and will embrace the area.

What obstacles are in the way of success: A lot of times new coaching hires bring in a fresh air of excitement and there’s a period early in the offseason where they can build that excitement. Due to the timing of this job opening in the spring, he didn’t get that. It was significant that this was the job that finally got McGee to leave Georgia yet hardly anyone noticed. Is he going to wake up the recruiting trail without that hype up period? McGee has mostly been a RB coach in his career and never even was a coordinator anywhere so that will be a question mark as well, what can we expect from them schematically?

Grade: B – This was a tough one to grade. I’m typically not a fan of hiring a position coach straight to HC without any coordinator experience in between, it’s a huge change and you don’t know what they know or don’t know about hiring the right coordinators. That being said, Georgia State was in a tough spot and this hire really exceeded what it felt like they could do in the tough circumstances. I also enjoyed that they hired a position coach from the best program in the country after people panicked that coaches would rather be SEC position coaches than G5 head coaches. So much for that!