Georgia Southern's Benko has spent the season in search of a new coach. His last search = Mike Leach
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
There was certainly irony.
Up until mid-September, Chad Lunsford was on the schedule to speak to the Macon Touchdown Club.
Before the first month of the college football season was out, the schedule changed, because Georgia Southern was changing coaches.
On the day (Oct.18) former head coach Chad Lunsford was supposed to speak, the man who fired him, Jared Benko, spoke to the Macon Touchdown Club, and the process of finding a new football coach was among the topics.
Video: Michael A. Lough/The Central Georgia Sports Report
And the man responsible for that decision was instead the speaker on Oct. 18.
Jared Benko, named in March of 2020 as Georgia Southern’s newest athletics director, stood at the podium.
Benko touched on a number of topics spanning his athletics administration career, which began in sports communications at Georgia. It led to a stint as director of business operations at Georgia, then too the same job at Arkansas from 2012-15. After 2015-16 at Auburn, he became the deputy AD and chief financial officer at Mississippi State in 2016.
One such topic was the hiring of a coach. Benko was involved in Mississippi State’s interest in Mike Leach.
One of Leach’s home locations is Key West, Florida, a quirky, independent place befitting a quirky, independent coach.
Benko was in the group planning to visit Leach. But they couldn’t hold of him. They tried a variety of connections, and then just decided to fly to Key West.
They finally got Leach on the phone.
“Mike’s first words were, ‘Go Bulldogs,’” Benko said. And then: “Well, I need to get my hair cut.”
They weren’t worried about his hair, so he told them to meet him at a local bike shop. Eventually, they congregated on his pool deck for about two hours of discussion.
“This search will not go down to Key West,” Benko said. “I can assure you that.”
The coach Leach was replacing was Dan Mullen. And a Florida fan, two weeks before the Gators’ game with Georgia, asked if there was any way GSU could hire Mullen.
“I’ve worked with Dan before,” Benko said, tongue in cheek. “That’s enough.”
He noted his respect for Mullen and expectations that he’d do fine at Florida.
In his more than 30-minute talk, Benko touched on the Georgia Southern tradition, the firing and hiring situation, the triple option, name-image-likeness and conference realignment, mass improvements at Southern.