Cole passing the Bears baton as Mercer AD after 16 years to Gerrity
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
The situation Jim Cole walked into back on July 1, 2010 on his first day as Mercer’s athletics director bears little resemblance to the one he leaves.
Financial and budget issues were concerns, and Mercer president Bill Underwood had started upgrading all phases of the school’s athletics program.
Underwood wanted much different than what he inherited, too, and decided Cole was the man to continue that push onward and upward.
Cole is stepping down after 16 years, the school announced Wednesday afternoon, with Brian Gerrity taking over.
Gerrity joined Mercer in June of 2012 as head of the Mercer Athletic Foundation, the athletic department’s then-fairly-new major fund-raising arm. Eventually, the title of deputy athletics director was added.
The change doesn’t come as a huge shock to those connected to Mercer, with some speculation on the department’s future starting in April of 2025 with the announcement that Underwood was retiring from his position to return to teaching law.
Penny Elkins was named as his replacement last November and took over on Jan. 1, with speculation only growing, as is often the case with changes in leadership.
Cole said in the school’s statement that he had started preparing for this transition a few years ago.
"My goal over the past two years has been to ensure Athletics was ready to continue to succeed without me, which included my recommendation of Brian as my successor," he said. “"He brings vision, energy and a deep commitment to Mercer and our scholar-athletes, and I know he will do great things.”
He added: “The timing of my announcement to step down as Athletics Director follows the recent graduation of my two children (Caroline and Lawson) from Mercer this past spring. … Every good coach knows that planning matters, and over the last couple of years, my goal has been to ensure Athletics was positioned to continue to thrive without me.”
There are still financial and budget concerns, similar ones and different with the major changes in college sports the past half-decade.
Gerrity is well-liked within the athletics department, and takes over with advantages Cole didn’t have: extensive knowledge of the department’s personnel and workings. and momentum. While Cole was part of the addition of sports and a large expansion of the entire athletics department staff as part of a decade or so of transition, Gerrity can focus on stability as well as continued progress and adjusting to the constant changes in college sports.
Underwood spurred spending in all phases of athletics, which were no longer an underfunded and understaffed afterthought.
The University Center opened about two years before Underwood succeeded Kirby Godsey, in 2004, after years of promises that construction was just around the corner.
As the school moved away from its Baptist Convention affiliation, life on campus and next to campus grew. And to the surprise of many, it became a campus allowing alcohol, with tailgating at football games and beer tents at other venues as well. It bears little resemblance to the campus at the start of the century.
As the 55-year-old Cole noted in his statement: “From 1950-2009, we won 15 conference and tournament championships in 60 years. From 2010-2026, we won 51 in 16 years.”
Mercer student-athletes have more than kept pace in the classroom while becoming more competitive on the fields, courts, and sand. Mercer has won 10 consecutive Southern Conference Barrett-Bonner Awards for athletics/academics, and produced 18 College Sports Communicators Academic All-Americans.
Under Cole, 10 Mercer teams have reached NCAA postseason play en route to expanding to 18 sports.
The football gamble started in 2013,
The addition of football brought Daniel Tate to Mercer along with the Bears’ first head coach of the revived program, Bobby Lamb. They worked together at Furman, and Tate soon became the unofficial No. 2 under Cole for more than a decade, resigning late in the spring as deputy AD for external operations for a non-athletics job. His replacement is Anna Marie Brrett, hired in July after several years with the Macon Mayhem as director of ticket sales, also serving as general manager for two years.
Cole will have a nice fan’s seat for the 2026 football season, Mercer being picked to win its third straight Southern Conference championship.
The same year football re-started, the men’s basketball team finally vanquished Florida Gulf Coast and won the Atlantic Sun Conference tournament, then rocked the college basketball world by upsetting Duke in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Head coach Bob Hoffman, though, was fired five years and two losing seasons later.
The women’s basketball program went from a sub-.500 unit a Southern Conference power under head coach Susie Gardner, who joined the Bears the same year as Cole. She resigned after the 2023-24 season.
Craig Gibson remains one of the most senior members of Mercer athletics, having just finished his 23rd season leading the Mercer baseball program he played for. Men’s soccer coach Brad Ruzzo isn’t far behind, having started at Mercer in 2008.
Cole has spent more than a third of his adult life connected to Mercer athletics, having played baseball under Barry Myers in the early 1990s before returning in 2010 as athletics director. He was the executive director, a part-time job at the time, of the Mercer Athletic Foundation for 18 months. Bobby Pope, who Cole replaced, became the MAF’s first full-time director, giving way a few years later to Gerrity.
Gerrity played basketball at Bates College and got his Masters from Springfield (Mass.) College. The former assistant AD for external relations at Hartford earlier this summer was named to Silver Waves Media's list of top 100 rising athletics directors.
According to Mercer’s release, unrestricted giving has increased by 550 percent under Gerrity, while significantly expanding athletic endowments.
Gerrity sparked a number of contracts for naming rights to assorted Mercer facilities (Five Star Stadium (football), OrthoGeorgia Park (baseball), Betts Stadium (soccer), the Cantrell Family Baseball Performance Center, the Overstreet Tennis Center and the Kevin & Carolyn Scheck Golf Performance Center).
"Mercer has been my home for over a decade, and being named Athletics Director is a profound responsibility I do not take lightly," said Gerrity in the school’s statement. "I am humbled and honored to step into this role and continue to build on the incredible strides forward we took as a department under Jim's leadership. We have some of the best and brightest scholar-athletes, coaches and staff in the country and I firmly believe our best days are ahead."
Gerrity added, "President Elkins is a strategic and innovative leader, and her cabinet shares her vision for the future of the University. One of the keys to success in collegiate athletics is alignment with leadership – and we have that at Mercer. I am thrilled to be able to communicate my vision for Mercer Athletics with our donors, alums, friends and community."
A former basketball scholar-athlete and graduate of Bates College, Gerrity earned his Master of Education from Springfield College. He resides in Macon with his daughter Freida.
"Today we celebrate the contributions of one leader and welcome another," Elkins said in the statement. "We are deeply grateful to Jim for his years of dedicated service to the University and the lasting impact he has made – and we are excited to welcome Brian and begin this next chapter for Mercer Athletics.
“With 14 years of institutional knowledge and service at Mercer, coupled with his exceptional talents, energy and passion for the University, Brian is well-positioned to accelerate and lead Mercer Athletics forward while building upon the remarkable accomplishments of his predecessor."