More than seven years after leaving Georgia in disgrace, Damon Evans is back running a major-conference athletic department. At least temporarily.
Evans, the associate athletics director at Maryland since November 2014, is now at the helm of the Terrapins’ athletic department on an interim basis. Kevin Anderson, the school’s athletics director, will take a six-month sabbatical, The Washington Post reported on Monday.
A former Georgia football player, Evans went into athletics administration and worked in Georgia’s athletic association. He was promoted to the top spot in 2004 when Vince Dooley was forced out by then-president Michael Adams.
Evans had just received a contract extension in the summer of 2010 when he was arrested on drunk-driving charges in Atlanta. The lurid details that emerged from the arrest contributed to UGA firing Evans a short time later.
“I learned a lot about myself,” Evans said during an appearance two years later at Morehouse College. “Sometimes, through the storms, you come out on the other end … a better person.”
During an interview after the panel with the AJC’s Tim Tucker, Evans was noncommittal on whether he wanted to be an athletic director ever again, saying he learned to never predict the future because “I thought I would be at Georgia for 30 years.”
Greg McGarity, then Florida’s associate athletics director, was hired by Georgia in August 2010.
Evans moved to Boston to work for a company outside of college athletics, The Markley Group, where he was vice president of business development. He stayed there until March 2013, then was vice president of fundraising for IMG College in Winston-Salem, N.C., and then a managing partner at Evolution Sports Partners in New Jersey.
“Damon has an extensive background in college athletics as a top administrator at one of the premier programs in the country,” Anderson said in a press release when Maryland hired Evans. “His overall scope of work and experience in financial management, product development, fundraising and managing athletic programs make him an outstanding addition at the University of Maryland.”
