Evans says he calls his own shots

ATLANTA - Saying he's not a puppet for the university president, Georgia athletic director Damon Evans insisted Monday that he's the one calling the shots in his department.

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Evans, nearing the end of his first month of the job, has already fired three of former athletic director Vince Dooley's most loyal senior staffers and forced another into retirement. In addition, Evans changed the title of several longtime department employees.

There has been much speculation that Georgia president Michael Adams is behind the personnel moves, wanting to lessen Dooley's influence over the department.

"That's not my goal whatsoever," Evans told a group of sportswriters at a Georgia Associated Press meeting. "I have not received any directive from anyone. It's just a plan that I have to come in and do what I think is appropriate for the direction I want to lead us in."

Evans, 34, had been one of Dooley's top lieutenants before his promotion as the first black athletic director in the Southeastern Conference, taking over after Adams rejected Dooley's request for a contract extension.

Evans said he knew before he took over on July 1 that all decisions would be analyzed against the backdrop of the larger context of the feud between Dooley and Adams.

"I knew everything I did was going to be questioned whether I'm doing it ... because of Adams," Evans said.

"I'll sit here and tell everybody in this room and look you dead in the eye: I'm doing it because it's what I think is appropriate."

Evans dismissed Avery McLean, Freddy Jones and Hoke Wilder, who had a combined 60 years of service under Dooley in the athletic department, and accepted the resignation of associate athletic director for development Kit Trensch. Among those getting a new job title: associate athletic director Claude Felton, who heads the sports information department.

Evans brought in former alumni director Dave Muia as a new associate athletic director to head marketing and development.

"I'm going to make my own decisions," Evans said. "I don't feel there is a need for me to be worried about a job or making decisions that aren't mine. The decisions I've made are my decisions."

Among other topics, he wants the Bulldogs to add a leading school from outside the Southeast to their football schedule by 2007 or 2008. As part of his desire "to grow us from a regional institution to a national institution," Evans has talked to schools from the Pac-10, Big Ten and Big 12.