Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer 14y

Source: Georgia AD Evans ousted

NCAA

ATHENS, Ga. -- University of Georgia athletics director Damon Evans has been relieved of his duties after he was charged with DUI on Wednesday night in Atlanta, a person familiar with the situation told ESPN.com on Sunday.

The source said it was unclear whether Evans, 40, who was the first African-American athletics director in Southeastern Conference history, was fired by Georgia president Michael Adams or resigned his position.

ABC affiliate WSB-TV in Atlanta first reported Evans' ouster.

Evans, who was hired to replace longtime Georgia athletics director and football coach Vince Dooley in 2004, was scheduled to begin a new five-year contract that would have paid him $550,000 annually.

"On Thursday night, I thought he would survive this," the UGA official said. "But after reading the police report, I didn't think he would be able to overcome it."

The executive board of the Georgia Athletic Association is scheduled to hold a teleconference on Monday, the official said. The school is expected to put out a news release regarding Evans' future after that teleconference.

A Georgia coach told ESPN.com on Sunday that during a meeting with several Bulldogs coaches on Thursday, Evans said his relationship with the 28-year-old passenger in his car was "nothing more than friends."

"He wasn't forthcoming about his relationship with the woman," the UGA coach said.

The Bulldogs coach said he probably wouldn't have attended a Thursday news conference to show support for Evans if he had known the details of the arrest.

According to a police report released Friday, Evans repeatedly referred to his position at the school before being arrested.

"I am not trying to bribe you but I am the athletic director of the University of Georgia," Evans said, according to the officer identified in the report as M. Cabe.

Arrested along with Evans was 28-year-old Courtney Fuhrmann, who was charged with disorderly conduct.

The officer also said that Evans asked to be taken to a motel instead of jail or to be let off with a warning. According to the report, Evans later said: "I am not trying to bribe you, but is there anything you can do without arresting me?"

In the report, the officer noted he found a "red pair of lady's panties between [Evans'] legs." When he asked Evans, a married father of two children, what he was doing with the underwear, Evans said: "She took them off and I held them because I was just trying to get her home," according to the report.

Evans told the officer that Fuhrmann was nothing more than a friend, according to the report. But the officer said that Fuhrmann later told him that the two had been seeing each other for "only a week or so."

"Just to let you know, it will be erased because he is the athletic director of UGA and he has that power," Fuhrmann told the officer, according to the report.

She was charged with disorderly conduct after police said she repeatedly ignored warnings to stay inside the 2009 BMW while the trooper was conducting the field sobriety test and later acting "combative" in the back seat of the patrol car, according to the report.

"I apologize and don't want to use my influence but she is trying to protect me," the officer said Evans told him.

Fuhrmann told The Associated Press on Friday the charges against her are a "misunderstanding from what the media is portraying it as" but declined to speak further.

Evans apologized for the incident during a news conference in Athens on Thursday and said he "failed miserably." He also apologized to his wife, Kerri, who attended the news conference.

"My behavior and my actions are not indicative of what we teach our student athletes," he said. "My actions have put a black cloud over our storied program."

Evans said Thursday he hoped to keep his job, which he has held since July 2004. He acknowledged he had placed Adams in a predicament.

"Certainly this is not an example of the kind of leadership that I expect our senior administrators to set," Adams said in a statement.

Adams returned from a vacation to review the arrest with senior staff and legal counsel.

Evans did not return phone messages Sunday. His attorney, Steve Weiner, also could not be reached for comment.

Mark Schlabach covers college football and men's college basketball for ESPN.com. Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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