Georgia will have about 80 new head coaches in football this season. That’s normal now in an era when one in five Georgia schools are making changes each season.
Here’s a look of 10 of the best hires of the off-season:
Dallas Allen, Douglass (Atlanta): Allen was 110-66 in 16 seasons at Westlake, a metro Atlanta school known for its NFL players, including Keyaron Fox, Adam “Pacman” Jones and Keith Adams, all of whom played under Allen, who left after the 2007 season for an administrative job. He’ll be back on the sidelines this year at Douglass, an inner-city Atlanta school that’s fallen on hard times (1-9 last season) with declining enrollment. Douglass is the alma mater of NFL star Jamal Lewis. Allen must rebuild a program that had only about 30 players on the varsity last season.
David Bruce, Veterans (Kathleen): Veterans is the newest school in Houston County, a football hotbed outside of Macon that is home to state powers Warner Robins and Northside. Bruce has been a head coach only once (4-6 at Nease of St. Augustine, Fla., in 1996) but been one of Georgia’s top assistants for years. He’s been defensive coordinator at Warner Robins since 2004, the season of its last state title. He also was an assistant to legendary Georgia coach Robert Davis at Warner Robins and Westside of Macon. Bruce’s teams are 191-79-1. The question is whether the county’s fifth high school will be nearer to Warner Robins and Northside or Houston County, which has been mediocre since opening in the 1990s.
Mike Earwood, Our Lady of Mercy (Fairburn): Earwood won a state title at Cartersville in 1991 and built Starr’s Mill’s program from scratch beginning in 1997. He’s 182-86-1 in a 23-year career. Earwood was semi-retired at Starr’s Mill, but when a budget crisis threatened part-time employees, Earwood jumped to nearby Our Lady, a small private school south of Atlanta that is less than 10 years into football and still looking for its first winning season.
Charles Flowers, Troup County (LaGrange): Flowers is the coach who built Shaw of Columbus into a state power. Shaw had been wretched until Flowers came in 1992 but won a state title in 2000 and averaged 12 victories over Flowers’ final seven seasons. Flowers (145-75 career record) spent the past three seasons at Dougherty of Albany and didn’t achieve great results and retired, but his alma mater, Troup, persuaded him to come home. Troup is a school that rarely escapes the shadows of powerful county rival LaGrange, but Flowers is a builder. He’s already picked up one significant transfer in quarterback Quan Bray from another county school, Callaway. Bray is considered a top-20 college prospect in Georgia.
Rance Gillespie, Valdosta: Gillespie was the offensive coordinator at Georgia Southern from 2007 to 2009, a rising star in coaching, but forced out in the firing of Chris Hatcher. Before that, Gillespie was head coach at Peach County during state titles in 2005 and 2006. Valdosta, a school with a record 23 state titles, but none since 1998, and many fans felt the culprit to its program’s demise was lack of creativity on offense. Offense is Gillespie’s specialty. This is expected to be Valdosta’s most talented team since at least the 2003 state runner-up. Tight end Jay Rome and defensive back Malcolm Mitchell are two of Georgia’s top 25 recruits.
Jesse Hicks, Dougherty (Albany): Hicks won region titles at Baldwin in 2008 and 2009 and took his team to the Class AAAA semifinals in 2005. Baldwin was 2-27-1 in the three seasons before Hicks, whose six-year record at the Middle Georgia school was 70-24. Dougherty is an Albany school that reached a state final in 2005 and won state in 1998 but has been middling otherwise. Hicks was eager to return to Albany, where he played college ball at Albany State.
Lynn Hunnicutt, Model (Rome): Model for years has been the least successful team in the northwest Georgia city of Rome, but now it has hired the area’s most successful coach the past couple of decades in Hunnicutt, who is 177-110-1 in his career. Hunnicutt won most of those games at Pepperell, his alma mater, which won a state title in 1990. Hunnicutt, a member of the Rome-Floyd Sports Hall of Fame, retired from coaching after the 2006 season, citing health reasons, but now wants to give it another shot in his hometown.
Corey Jarvis, Duluth: One of the more shocking moves of the off-season in Georgia was Jarvis’s decision to leave M.L. King, which was 49-11 in his five seasons, for Duluth, which was 6-44 during the same time and hasn’t won a playoff game in almost 25 years. But Duluth is in Gwinnett County, an attractive spot for coaches due to its facilities and community support. Duluth isn’t known for football, but major leaguers Brian McCann and Nick Green went there.
Gary Morton, East Laurens (Dublin): This Dublin school has won just one playoff game in its 48-year history but is hungry for success in this football-crazy part of Southeast Georgia.. Like its rival West Laurens, East struggles to match the success of the local city school, Dublin, a state powerhouse. Morton is coming from DeSoto County (Fla.), where he was 48-28 in seven seasons. East Laurens is comforted by the fact that DeSoto was 5-25 in the three seasons prior.
Rick Tomberlin, Effingham County (Springfield): Tomberlin, the coach that proud Valdosta fired in mid-season last year, only to let him finish the season at 7-4, is back in Effingham, where he began his coaching career as an assistant in 1981. Tomberlin was 22-21 in his four seasons at Valdosta but made his name at Washington County, where he won state titles in 1994, 1996 and 1997 with stars such as Takeo Spikes and Robert Edwards. Effingham, a Savannah-area school, was 3-7 last season and hasn’t won a playoff game since 1995.
