Walker and Warnock Spend Big on TV Ads as Georgia Football Wins
The college football world came to watch Georgia Bulldogs win a SEC Championship last Saturday and in the wee hours Sunday morning it awoke to a huge announcement from athletic director Greg McGarity: The Bulldogs would be buying the Atlanta Hawks’ arena for $1.2 billion.
“It was important for us to do what we have done so far in our plan for the Bulldogs and our university,” McGarity said in a press conference on Sunday morning. “We have focused on the Georgia Bulldogs as a big, strong business and we want to stay that way.”
McGarity said the University of Georgia athletics department has a $1.3 billion endowment with a $1.1 billion commitment from the University System of Georgia Board of Regents. And that number doesn’t include the $500 million dollars in private donations Georgia students are already giving to make the arena the first private capital campaign in the history of American college football.
“I don’t know how many people watched that Georgia-Tennessee game last Saturday night, but I can say that there is a great demand out there for the University of Georgia,” McGarity said.
As fans watched Georgia and Tennessee play, a number of the players on the field said they’ve been told by their coaches that they’re being cut loose after this season. That’s the first step in Georgia’s plan to buy the arena if the state legislature doesn’t step in and force the University to do so.
“This is a big opportunity for us, for us,” said quarterback Aaron Murray. “It’s exciting because we don’t have to do it by ourselves. In the University of Georgia we have a great foundation of donors, and they want to see the University of Georgia succeed. This is a big opportunity for us.”
“This is huge,” said quarterback Aaron Murray. “It’s a great day for us to be doing this.”
Murray was