It's Grantham

Update: GeorgiaDogs.com has confirmed the hiring. They are doing a conference call with the media this evening.

From Grantham:

"I would like to thank Coach Mark Richt and Damon Evans for the opportunity for myself and my family to be part of the University of Georgia community," said Grantham. "I'm very excited about being part of a staff that will work tremendously hard to return Georgia football to one of the premier teams in the SEC. To the fans and boosters of the University of Georgia, I understand the passion and standard of excellence expected. I look forward to developing an aggressive, physical, attacking style defense that offenses will not look forward to playing against." (emphasis added)

From Richt

"I'm excited the search is over, we have our man, and look forward to what Todd will bring to our defense, our team, and our University," said Richt. "I think it is particularly valuable that he has a wealth of experience on the defensive side of the ball at both the NFL and collegiate levels. Now we look forward to moving ahead with the home stretch of recruiting, finishing out the defensive staff, and getting ready for spring practice."

The hire has been growing on me the past few days. Especially as it comes out that he was recommended for the job by Frank Beamer and Nick Saban. He's good enough that Saban heavily pursued him to be DC for the Dolphins. Those are directionally good signs.

During his career Grantham has worked under several successful head coaches and defensive coordinators on both the pro and college levels including Frank Beamer and Bud Foster at Virginia Tech, Nick Saban at Michigan State, Romeo Crennel at Cleveland, Dom Capers at Houston, and Wade Phillips at Dallas.

More later. In meetings all day.

BTW -- Don't rejoice over the Cutcliffe rejection notice for UT. If the rumors I'm hearing are true, the Vols could end up with someone better than Cutcliffe (Duke), Calhoun (Air Force) or Kiffin. We'll see how this all shakes out. Hopefully, it ends badly for them.

In 1989, Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry (among others) turned down the UGA job, and we ended up with Ray Goff. That's the scenario we want for the Vols. Not the 2001 scenario where the conversations don't work out with Chan Gailey so we ended up with Mark Richt. You never know how these coaching searches will turn out.

Update -- I was asked in the comments to elaborate on what we were hearing re: UT...multiple sources are now saying that Kyle Whittingham was the runner-up for the UT hire behind Derek Dooley who got the job. The Whittingham rumor was the one we heard from multiple sources yesterday, and that was the one that worried me a little. I am certainly not worried about Derek Dooley. More on that later.

PWD