Josh Brooks was midway through his sophomore year at LSU, a student equipment manager for his home-state football team, where he would tell people his dreams and aspirations: Football coach or administrator. No way, people would respond. There’s no career path for that where you are now.
Then Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher arrived.
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Brooks was assigned to be Fisher’s student assistant, and over the next 18 months so impressed him that Fisher allowed him to sit in on meetings, chart in the press box next to assistant coach Adam Gase, and make connections on a staff that also included future FBS head coaches Mel Tucker, Will Muschamp and Derek Dooley.
It was the key break in a career that 20 years later finds Brooks taking over as Georgia’s interim athletic director on Friday.
“Josh Brooks is one of the most respected administrators in the conference,” Fisher said this week. “Early in his career as a student at LSU, I could tell he was special. He is very organized and has great communication skills. Every day he wanted to learn as much as he can. Josh is going to be successful in everything he does.”
Brooks, now 40, was born and raised in Hammond, La., a small town about an hour north of New Orleans. He played high school football and threw the javelin for the track team, portending two key sports he would oversee years later at Georgia.
After LSU, Brooks went to Louisiana-Monroe as a graduate assistant. It was rare, and still is, for GA’s to not have played college football, which is why Fisher’s faith in Brooks was vital. He was a GA for one year when Louisiana-Monroe hired a new coach: Charlie Weatherbie, the former Navy head coach, who would bestow Brooks’ next big career break.
And peanut butter and jelly played a part.
Weatherbie was impressed with Brooks’ administrative skills, so he created a job for him: Football operations, now commonplace, but new at the time for ULM.
The Sun Belt school had one of the lowest budgets in the country, around $3 million for all sports, not just football, per Weatherbie. They couldn’t afford snacks for football players during summer workouts. So Brooks went to the local supermarket, talked to the manager and struck a deal: They got large tubs of peanut butter and jelly before they expired, then also got a local bakery to donate bread, and each day Brooks and the student assistants would make PB&J sandwiches.
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“Josh just showed me unbelievable work ethic and great vision,” Weatherbie said. “He could see things ahead of time. And it seemed like he always, always, had an answer. He was always ahead of the posse, so to speak, and always knew what we were hunting for.”
Josh Brooks will take over as Georgia’s interim athletic director on Jan. 1. (Tony Walsh / UGA Athletics)
Brooks found other ways to operate efficiently and better. He arranged for assistants to get in a rotation to do bed checks and study hall checks. He was put in charge of the graduate assistants and the team’s summer camps. Weatherbie found Brooks to be stern in his beliefs and what he wanted done, but able to communicate it “in a loving way.” He was an organizational person in a visionary sense, as Weatherbie put it, in a way that’s applicable to being an athletic director.
“He’s a special, special guy,” Weatherbie said. “There’s not many like him. I’ve coached for 30 years in college and there’s not many like that guy.”
The next big break, and the path to Georgia, may have been thanks to Kirby Smart and Alabama, though in a backward way: Louisiana-Monroe upset Alabama in 2007, enhancing the ULM name on the résumé for several of Weatherbie’s staffers. That included Brooks, who had wanted to work at Georgia since he visited Sanford Stadium in 1999 while at LSU. He blindly applied for a football operations job at Georgia, sending then-coach Mark Richt a binder with everything he’d done at ULM.
Richt called Brooks right away and, after a short interview, offered him the job as assistant director of football operations.
“Once I had the first conversation with him I was very comfortable that he was going to do a great job,” Richt said. “It turned out to be a home run hire.”
For the next two seasons, Brooks performed many of the same duties as he had at ULM — though with a bigger available budget, so fewer PB&J deals. Anything and everything that had to do with the organization of travel, meals, practice, camps, etc.
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“He’s the go-to, the conduit of all parties that are involved,” Richt said, describing the role of the job Brooks filled. “And also, if he’s a good one, he’s a guy who’s your eyes and ears around the program. He may see something that may need to be brought to your attention and come let you know. Or he even might get to the point where he might say: ‘Are you sure that’s what you want to do?’ A good sounding board for the head coach as well.”
Then came another fateful career turn: Fisher had just arrived at Florida State and wanted to re-hire Brooks. (Seven years before Fisher had tried to hire Brooks as a GA at LSU, but Saban gave the job to future Georgia offensive coordinator James Coley.) By this time, however, Brooks had decided that sports administration was his preference, and Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity offered him a spot on his senior staff.
For the next four years, Brooks’ duties would straddle football and other sports, and veer into facilities. He helped arrange the Jason Aldean concert at Sanford Stadium in 2013. He was the “sport facilitator” for football, which often meant arcane or behind-the-scenes things. But one was very much in front: The Notre Dame home-and-home series, spearheaded through a connection Brooks had in South Bend.
Richt said Brooks’ organizational skills stood out when it came to being a facilitator between football and the athletic department.
“I would think as an athletic director there’s obviously a lot of different sports, and a lot of different personalities, and a lot of different needs,” Richt said. “The ability to process information and be able to make good, sound decisions, I think he’s really strong in that area.”
By the time Brooks left Athens in 2014, he had made enough connections that six years later, when promoted to interim athletic director, more than a few big names lobbied for him to get the full-time job:
I don’t know much about being an AD but UGA shouldn’t have to look far got one of the best in the business in @Brooks_UGA!
— David Andrews (@dandrews61) November 30, 2020
But how would Brooks do as a full-time AD? He does have some experience in that.
Millsaps is a Division III school in Jackson, Miss., and plays in the same conference as Centre College (Ky.), where Michael Adams was president before making the jump to Georgia president. Millsaps president Rob Pearigen knew after the first interview with Brooks that he was the guy he wanted. It came through that he had a clear value for D-III athletics. His passion, intelligence and ability to articulate his ideas stood out to Pearigen.
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“First of all, I have to admit I’m still annoyed that he left,” Pearigen said, lightheartedly. “He wasn’t here that long and he did a very fine job while he was here. But I was not happy when he left. I understood. … I had very positive feelings about Josh when he was here.”
The gameday experience was the “big deal” for Brooks, according to Pearigen, introducing balloon bounces and other amenities to attract families. But Brooks was also one of the first in college sports to introduce an on-site beer garden, which merited a mention in Sports Illustrated. There was some mild pushback at Millsaps, a Methodist-influenced college.
“A bishop called me and asked if it wouldn’t have been better if I had asked permission. I’m like, ‘No,’” Pearigen said, with a laugh.
There were limits for Millsaps’ financially, but Brooks never complained, instead trying ways to use the money creatively. And Brooks got along well with the football coach at the time, Aaron Pelch, who is now the school’s athletic director.
“He understands the coaching side because he’s been a coach. And he’s very good with donors and very good on the administrative side as well,” Pelch said. “So he’s a really great bridge in that way between the coaches and the admins and the alums. He was really outstanding.”
Brooks’ philosophy was of evaluation from a wholistic standpoint: Recruiting, retention, satisfaction of student-athletes. What resources are available? If we are giving you all the resources you need and you’re not productive, do we have a coaching issue?
One of the difficult coaching decisions was in men’s basketball. The coach was a former Millsaps player, in the school’s Hall of Fame, and was Brooks’ predecessor at A.D. So he was legendary at the school but the team was struggling. Brooks realized a change would have to be made.
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“He laid the groundwork for that decision to be made,” Pelch said. “And not that he was plotting. But more that he came in and was able to clearly articulate and communicate what our standard is and what the expectation was. And that had never really been articulated to us in the past.”
Josh Brooks Career Path
| YEAR(S) | ROLE |
|---|---|
2002 | Graduated from LSU (B.A., Kinesiology) |
2002-08 | Louisiana-Monroe Graduate Assistant/Football Ops Director |
2008-14 | Georgia Football Ops Director/Associate Athletic Director |
2014-15 | Millsaps College (Miss.) Athletic Director |
2015-16 | Louisiana-Monroe Deputy Athletic Director |
2016-20 | Georgia Associate Athletic Director/Sr. Deputy Athletic Director |
2021-? | Georgia Interim Athletic Director |
How would he translate to an SEC athletic director? Pelch thinks Brooks has talent that would “transcend” different levels of athletics.
“And I think when you couple that talent with that work ethic and that drive, I think that’s where it’s at with me,” Pelch said. “When I look at him, I say: He’s got it.”
“It’s hard to know what the secret sauce is for a person to be highly successful in that role at that level. I know he was successful here,” Pearigen said. “And I think some of the approaches he took here would translate. His character, his intelligence, his passion, would translate to that level, in a very good way.”
Brooks was lured back to Louisiana-Monroe in 2015, where the football program had slipped and needed help with ticket sales and special events. He brought what then-A.D. Brian Wickstrom called “outside-the-box” ideas. But he wasn’t there long enough to see them come to fruition: Georgia called, and Brooks returned as associate A.D in 2016. He moved up to the No. 2 role after Carla Williams left in late 2017 to become A.D. at Virginia.
Brooks has been heavily involved in facilities at Georgia, while also overseeing some sports, including the national championship-winning track program, whose head coach Petros Kyprianou gave Brooks his endorsement in a tweet: “A superstar AD in the making, that’s who he is. Jewel of a human, fierce competitor and mainly he wants and can win in every sport.”
There is no certainty that Brooks will be the permanent A.D. Georgia president Jere Morehead has said there will be a national search and has appointed an advisory committee. The school has worked in the past with the search firm Collegiate Sports Associates, and may be doing so again in this case. But one other prime candidate — Williams — has basically pulled her name out of the running. And Brooks has the advantage of holding the job, even on an interim basis.
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He also has the advantage of being well-liked.
“He’s just a good person,” McGarity said. “People get along with him. He’s not a big-timer. He’s not a helicopter supervisor. He realizes that we’re all in support roles here. And while we have to say no at certain times all our job is is to make people better. We’re not in it for ourselves. What can we do to help coaches and student-athletes have a great experience, and what can we do to make our staff feel supported? He’s wired in that manner and has tremendous respect among his peers.”
“I think he’s a very, very good person,” Richt said. “He’s a good husband and father. He cares about people in general. And I think that’s huge. When you’re dealing with student-athletes, they’ve got to know you care, and he’s one of those people.”
Brooks was asked earlier this month what makes him believe he’s ready to take on the role of an SEC athletic director at this point in his career.
“I have always been young in my career as I have advanced,” he said. “I am young, but I’ve had 20-plus years of experience in college athletics. I have seen athletics at every level — small schools, big schools. I have worked as a student assistant, grad assistant coach. I have worked in football operations — that gives me the coaching side of it. I have worked in administration 10-plus years. I have been able to serve as an A.D., and know a small school like Millsaps, some people may say, ‘Well, that’s not really relevant.’ In all reality, it’s a lot more relevant than you think because you are dealing with student-athletes, parents, coaches, staff. A lot of the issues are the same.
“I have had a wide range of experience. Especially my time here at Georgia, the last few years, Greg has really nurtured me and given me some peeks behind the road to really see what it is like in his shoes. I feel ready and I feel confident for this responsibility.”
(Top photo: Tony Walsh / UGA Athletics)
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