ATHENS — Josh Brooks is tied for ninth among SEC athletic directors in annual base and supplemental pay, but the Georgia AD also cashed in on $400,000 in bonuses after last season.
Brooks, who is seventh among SEC ADs in tenure at his current school, will make $1.5 million in base and supplemental pay this season.
Brooks’ salary averages $1.75 million over the duration of his contract through June 30, 2031, per information obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through an open records request.
Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte, who signed an 11-year extension in 2025 for $38 million, per Front Office Sports, sets the bar in the SEC with an average annual salary of $3.5 million.
Former Georgia Tech athletic director J. Batt recently signed on as Kentucky’s athletic director and will make $2.6 million this season and average approximately $3 million per season over the duration of his six-year contract, ranking third among SEC ADs per published data acquired by the AJC.
Brooks’ contract also includes performance incentives — all three of which he reached this season — that include:
- $200,000 for finishing in the Top 10 of the Learfield Directors’ Cup, which scores the success of all of the scholarship athletic programs
- $100,000 bonus if all UGA teams finish with a four-year Academic Progress Rate of 930 or greater
- $100,000 bonus if the average grade-point average for UGA athletics is 3.25 or higher
UGA revealed at its fall Athletic Association Board of Directors meeting Friday that Georgia athletes posted a record 3.28 cumulative GPA in the 2025-26 athletics season. This, in a year that saw the Bulldogs collect three national championship trophies and score their third Top 10 finish in the Learfield Director’s Cup in the past five years.
Georgia’s eighth-place Learfield Director’s Cup finish — third among SEC teams behind Texas and Florida — featured a school-record 1,081.25 points.
Brooks referred to it as “a year to remember for Georgia athletics,” as football coach Kirby Smart also became just the fourth SEC coach to win back-to-back conference title games in addition to tying former Florida coach Steve Spurrier with five straight SEC championship game appearances.
UGA was the only athletic program in the nation over the 2025-26 sports calendar to record 12 wins in football, 40-plus wins in baseball and 20 or more wins in men’s and women’s basketball.
Georgia’s finish would have been fifth in the nation and second in the SEC if the NCAA counted equestrian among its scholarship sports in the standings, as the Bulldogs finished third in the nation in that sport.
From a fundraising standpoint, Brooks announced at the fall board meeting that UGA is just short (about $4 million) of reaching its five-year goal of raising $300 million in the fourth year of the campaign.
Georgia recently ranked tied for fourth (with Michigan) in CNBC’s collegiate sports program valuations at $1.16 billion.
Brooks has also brought value to NCAA operations, serving as the vice chair of the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision Oversight Committee and chair of the NCAA Football Practice and Playing Seasons Committee.
Brooks has been part of the NCAA committees establishing a new football calendar for the 2026 season, reducing the portal to one transfer window and establishing more severe penalties for transfer portal and tampering violations.
Brooks, in his sixth year as UGA’s athletic director, has hired all but three of Georgia’s current head coaches.
UGA soccer coach Keidane McAlpine, a former national championship coach Brooks hired away from USC in 2021, said Brooks’ background in football coaching and operations makes him an effective leader.
“I think that Josh having gone all the way through the trenches of athletics makes him unique,” McAlpine said.
McAlpine is one of five national championship coaches on Brooks’ roster. “He understands the grind of all of the jobs in the program,” McAlpine said.
Brooks has become known for pushing all of the Bulldogs’ sports programs, and the results bear that out, as nine of UGA’s 20 NCAA-sponsored sports teams scored in the Directors’ Cup Top 10 in their respective standings/rankings:
- Women’s outdoor track: first
- Women’s indoor track: first
- Men’s outdoor track: second
- Baseball: third
- Women’s tennis: third
- Women’s gymnastics: fifth
- Football: fifth
- Softball: ninth
- Men’s tennis: ninth
SEC athletic director pay
Per most recent published reports:
1. Chris Del Conte, Texas: $3.5 million (through 2036)
2. Trev Alberts, Texas A&M: $3.2 million (through 2032)
3. J. Batt, Kentucky: $3 million (through 2032)
4. Danny White, Tennessee: $2.75 million (through 2032*)
5. Jeremiah Donati, South Carolina: $2.15 million (through 2031)
6. Greg Byrne, Alabama: $2.1 million (through 2031)
7. Scott Stricklin, Florida: $2.075 million (through 2030)
8. John Cohen, Auburn: $1.84 million (through 2029)
9. Hunter Yurachek, Arkansas: $1.75 million (through 2027**)
9. Laird Veatch Missouri: $1.75 million (through 2029)
9. Josh Brooks, Georgia, $1.75 million (through 2031)
12. Verge Ausberry, LSU: $1.6 million (through 2030)
12. Keith Carter, Ole Miss: $1.6 million (through 2029)
14. Zac Selmon, Mississippi State: $1.44 million (through 2029)
15. Candice Storey Lee, Vanderbilt: $1.4 million (through 2028)
16. Roger Denny, Oklahoma: $1.25 million (through 2030)
* renews annually
** deferred funds and fluid annual raise corresponding with increases in faculty and staff pay
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