Over the past 15 years or so, I’ve spent an obscene amount of time thinking about Mark Richt. For the previous 14 seasons, he’s been the head coach of the University of Georgia football team, whose games I grew up watching with my parents.

Richt is a complex figure in an increasingly monied and cutthroat sport. He’s seen as a “molder of men,” who cares about the person under the helmet, as much as he cares about his team’s on-field results. It’s led many to question whether he’s too virtuous to win on the biggest stages college football has to offer—despite the fact that he’s paid $4 million per year to do just that. And that’s the premise of the feature I wrote for Atlanta Magazine about him.

Read: “Hail Mark.”