Before we begin, let’s make one thing perfectly clear: it’s not about Vince Dooley.

Yes, UGA President Michael Adams exerted extraordinary pressure on Dooley to get him to resign as Athletic Director, and although after 41 years it was probably time for Dooley to step down, he had certainly earned the right to choose the manner of his departure. And yes, there is ample evidence to suggest that Adams was strongarmed into pushing Dooley out by Columbus liquor magnate Don Leebern, a powerful member of the Board of Regents, after Leebern’s old pal Vince refused to name gymnastics coach Suzanne Yoculan (with whom the married Leebern was having a well-publicized affair) assistant AD.

But it’s not about Vince Dooley.

And yes, Michael Adams brokered an under-the-table deal to pay ex-head coach Jim Donnan a severance bonus of $250,000, a violation of NCAA rules, and specifically ordered the deal hidden from Dooley. And yes, upon Dooley’s departure Bulldog Nation was outraged and vocal and alumni contributions plunged into the toilet and fans called for Adams’s resignation, if not his actual head.

But it’s not about Vince Dooley.

This point is vitally important because in the wake of several investigations into Michael Adams’s financial dealings, expenditures of public funds for private use, worsening relations with UGA faculty, and pretty much enough alleged malfeasance to float boats in Sanford Stadium, Adams has dismissed his critics as disgruntled Dooley supporters and cast himself as the hero in an epic battle between academics and athletics for the soul of the University of Georgia. Much like another recent president with things to hide, Adams has framed the debate over his dealings and his character in such terms as to say that to oppose him is to oppose the university itself and to let the evildoers win.

None of this sordid and convoluted mess is news to those of us who’ve been living in the thick of it for the past dozen years, but for anyone who may be new in town, or not fully up to speed, or who just gives a good goddamn about the integrity of the state’s flagship university, there’s Behind the Hedges: Big Money and Power Politics at the University of Georgia (NewSouth Books, 2009) by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Rich Whitt, late of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Whitt takes a deep, probing and uncompromising look at the Adams administration, from the questionable hiring of a man whose academic credentials were featherweight at best to head a major research institution to the schism which undocked the UGA Foundation (the university’s major fundraising organization) from the university it was founded to support.

It was clear from the very beginning that as state funding for the entire university system dwindled in the face of a worsening economy, Adams’s primary role was to be a fundraiser and politico rather than a faculty president, and Adams warmed to his role as CEO and Chief Gladhander with gusto. To the Foundation’s dismay as the prime source of the President’s salary, however, Adams began drawing on Foundation funds as his personal bank account, bankrolling improvements to his residence, an unprecedented stipend for his wife, lavish parties for his son and stadium box seats for his friends, and a half-million-dollar condo in Buckhead for his personal use while in Atlanta. Adams paid an architect friend $71,000 to consult on the Alumni Center building project and attempted to secure jobs for other cronies.

When the Foundation cried foul, Adams dismissed their outcry as mere fallout from the Dooley affair. The Foundation responded by commissioning a forensic audit of Adams’s expenditures by the prestigious accounting firm Deloitte & Touche. The D&T audit proved damning in its findings but was summarily discarded by the Board of Regents, including Leebern, Chancellor Tom Meredith, and others who shared with Adams a common friend in Governor Sonny Perdue (Leebern alone contributed $200,000 to Perdue’s reelection campaign). Many of the Regents later admitted that they hadn’t even read the D&T report, but that didn’t stop them from cutting loose the UGA Foundation, which now operates independently but in a greatly reduced capacity. In other words, it was worth it to the Regents to sever the University’s ties with half a billion dollars’ worth of philanthropy rather than piss off Michael Adams.

If that weren’t enough, Whitt covers all the low points: a vote of no confidence by 70 percent of the UGA Faculty Senate, whose salaries have stagnated while Adams’s adds up to one of the highest for a college president in the country, and who are watching as Georgia’s academic rankings have steadily dropped to among the worst in the Southeast. The loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenue from a breakthrough veterinary drug with potential applications for human use, created by a UGA vet school professor but sold without her knowledge for a fraction of its value by the Adams folks. The Jim Harrick scandal, which made UGA a national laughingstock. Much, much more, and yes, the Vince Dooley imbroglio.

Whitt’s book is sharp, inclusive, and renders even the most entangled legal and financial issues comprehensible. It also includes the full texts of the D&T report, the responses from the Board of Regents and from Adams, and a truly baffling refusal by state Attorney General Thurbert Baker to get involved in what are clearly issues of fraud and betrayal of the public trust. It should also find its way onto the bookshelves of anyone, regardless of location, who has an interest in how state universities are now funded and will be in the future.

More to the point, Behind the Hedges should get a good airing here in Athens. Speaking as a UGA alumnus, a member of the community that depends on the continued prosperity of the University to keep this town going, and as a citizen of Georgia, I want my neighbors to read it, here and across the state. And I’d like to hear some kind of answer from all parties involved, preferably an answer concerning their own behavior and not that of the football fans - because it’s not about Vince Dooley, not by a long shot.

John G. Nettles