FLORIDA FOOTBALL & RECRUITING COVERAGE

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This is one part of a four part series taking an in-depth look into the Florida Gators recruiting staff.

April 25 is Take Your Daughter to Work Day. In offices and jobs across America, parents will give their young girls a glimpse into their day to day responsibilities and hopefully inspire dreams of what they themselves can one day do for a living. Any daughter that steps into Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Thursday will see Lee Begley in one of the program’s most important roles. Inside the Gators Kassidy Hill spent a day ‘shadowing’ her to see for ourselves what that role entails.

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Lee Davis Begley shuffles forms and papers around to make a stack for each person. Standing towards the head of the large, heavy table in the Florida Gators “War Room”, Begley takes a couple of minutes by herself to prepare for the Gators afternoon recruiting meeting. Coworkers steadily slip in and by the time everyone is in their seat, there are nine support staff members around the table going over the details of the upcoming recruiting weekend during the Gators annual Orange and Blue game. Whether they’re reviewing family member’s names or who needs pictures, one thing remains the same; Lee is in charge.

As the Director of Recruiting Operations on Dan Mullen’s staff, she’s the person cornerbacks coach Torrian Gray calls “the boss” in charge of them all. During that Thursday afternoon meeting, his statement rings true, showing just how far this program and college football has come in recent years. Begley is the only woman sitting around this table of nine, but all eyes are on her, looking to this young lady for their direction.

Begley was first hired within this close-knit staff right out of college. She jokes that she’s only had two interviews in her life; one with Nick Saban and one with Dan Mullen. Both earned her positions that required keeping up or getting left behind in the fast paced world of college football recruiting. It’s a position that many envy, but few can do well.

She’s responsible for a litany of things, some defined, others ambiguous, areas that never change and brand new issues that arise every day. She keeps up with new NCAA rules, is the liaison with compliance and makes sure everyone is following the guidelines. She’s the one trusted to be head coach Dan Mullen’s assistant in some ways—“she gets the tough one” Mullen laughingly tells Inside the Gators—and she’s the first line of communication for all prospects, parents and high school coaches. She runs the recruiting office for the Gators, meaning she’s in charge of a team of support staff who, unlike assistant coaches, aren’t ranked as recruiters by sites such as Rivals or 247 but do as much recruiting for the school as any coach. She runs these afternoon recruiting meetings, the recruiting weekends and is the catalyst for so many of the coaches' recruiting efforts. If the coaches like a kid, she’s the first to know and the one who reminds them of such when they’re on the road recruiting.

“We’ll do recruiting staff meetings a couple days a week and watch kids,” Begley explains to Inside the Gators as she pulls together notes for the weekend, looking them over to make sure she has every last detail on each kid attending in place. Since the coaches will be focused on the current team and game planning for much of the day, it’s Begley’s job to carry out their wishes concerning those in attendance.

“I [sit in on the film sessions] because that way I know who they like and don’t like and I’ll type Coach [Mullen’s] notes. So he’ll comment on a kid and I’ll enter it in for him. But it also helps because I know 'ok they like him' so we need to go full force on him, that type of thing.”

Working in football was more than a goal for Begley; it’s simply what she’s always known. Her father, Duane Davis, has spent Lee’s entire life coaching high school football around south Alabama. For most of her childhood he was at Clarke County High School in Grove Hill then Gulf Shores High School, two towns separated by less than 130 miles but have little in common other than a 10% state sales tax and football. She spent two years at University of Mobile before transferring to University of Alabama, again picking up the one strain that had been a constant in her life—football.

Once there though reality forced her dreams to address how exactly they could come to fruition.

“I knew I wanted to work in sports but I didn’t really know what opportunities there were for women in sports other than being a reporter, being an athletic trainer, stuff like that…I was like ok this is what I want do to, how do I do it? Because back then—this was 10 years ago—there were no women in football offices in recruiting positions, like none. So I was like ‘ok what are the odds I can actually get a job.’”

All she knew was that she wanted to work in sports, which just happened to be a man’s world. It wasn’t a deterrent, just a challenge that had to be overcome.

“You have to have thick skin. You can’t not to work in a male dominated field so I think it helped me cause I was, I would say a little bit of a tomboy. So I was always at the field house, dad, his co-workers, the football players. So it helped for sure.

“I’ve always been around that my whole life so that wasn’t weird. I think it took [the staff and coaches] maybe a little while like ‘ok I can trust her’, for me to earn their respect…I feel like each person’s different but probably about a year, going through a full recruiting cycle and them seeing ‘ok she’s not leaving at 5 o’clock and if I need her she’s gonna pick up the phone.’”

There’s an adage that gets passed around to female’s who want to enter into what have historically been male dominated fields; you have to work twice as hard for half the respect and you have to do it in high heels. Within the Mullen staff, the respect was hard earned but well rewarded.

“If you’re capable of doing your job [gender] doesn’t affect me at all,” explains Gators defensive coordinator Todd Grantham.

“I’ve always been relative that no matter who you are or what you are, if you’re capable of your job, you do your job and she certainly does it well."

Billy Gonzales, the Gators co-offensive coordinator and wide receiver coach, once held the recruiting coordinator title during his first stint in Gainesville. Now 10 years later, he’s in those same halls but being flagged down by Begley who has taken over the responsibilities. It’s a natural progression he felt had to happen.

“As everything’s expanded in college football, just like anything else with different positions as far as quality control positions and coach positions, it’s one of those things that was just natural and it’s gonna happen. And I think it’s a great spot for the simple reason, she gets to interact with parents, she does a fantastic job interacting with the student athlete as well as the parents, being able to organize so it’s something that’s naturally happened and she’s done a fantastic job for us.”

That trust led to loyalty, something Mullen values in those he hires and keeps, which is why Begley was one of the first he asked to join the staff at Florida from Mississippi State. Her first time in Gainesville was when she stepped off the plane behind Dan and Megan Mullen.

“She came in young and she’s stuck with us,” the head coach recalls.

“She’s been very loyal to us and the program. She’s had a lot of opportunities; a lot of people have tried to hire her away and she’s always stuck with us and wanted to be apart of it and it’s seen in her growth and her development and her responsibilities in how she runs the program.”

It’s that last part that stands out; Mullen didn’t think twice about speaking on Begley’s responsibilities and “how she runs the program.” Football staffs have long had women working in the office to handle recruiting obligations, travel arrangements, etc. But rarely, if ever, have they had the title to accompany the responsibilities. Often it’s an assistant coach that is given the credit for the work with the byline of that program’s recruiting coordinator. Under Mullen, Florida hasn't designated an assistant as its recruiting coordinator, Begley though is recognized as the Director of Recruiting Operations. By our research she’s the only woman in a Power 5 Conference program to hold such a lofty title position without the aid of having a stated recruiting coordinator as part of the staff.

Often our accomplishments are indicative not just of our own path but of those who helped clear the foliage so we could better see the goals we want to accomplish. So to really appreciate and honor the glass ceiling that Begley has helped shatter, we have to acknowledge those that helped build the staircase.

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Let’s start with Betty Ling.

Ling was the on-campus recruiting coordinator for the Gators from 1979 until the end of the 2006 season.

“I took it in ‘79 when [Coach Charley] Pell came in and we needed to make a change and communication with the high schools and that was my job Coach Pell asked me to do,” Ling tells Inside the Gators.

Her matter of fact personality brought a balance to the office that was desperately needed, and as she explains, her and her team’s perspective helped shape recruiting practices that are now used throughout the SEC and college football.

“We created a lot of the SEC forms and a lot of the techniques that all of the colleges are using now because nobody had really gotten into like we did. That was started by Coach Pell and every coach really enhanced that and we would change the recruiting system per se so that people understood and I could sell that coaches’ personality in the kinds of letters that I wrote and things that interested him so that when they got here and met him they knew a little bit about him.”

Through Coach Pell, Galen Hall, Gary Darnell, Steve Spurrier (who she was with the longest and still considers a good friend), Ron Zook and Urban Meyer, one of the few constants in the football office was Betty Ling. She kept up with schedule’s of every single prospect they were recruiting, writing them notes of encouragement each week and keeping the coaches and kids connected. She provided the touch the staff needed to keep things personal and took what had largely been a glorified secretary position and turned it into a valuable asset to one of the country’s largest football programs.

“It was a tough job and of course we didn’t get all the accolades…I think I set the pace because I was the first. Being the only woman, I was at staff meetings with them every week. I wasn’t excluded from anything or mistreated. I went to practice. I’d be there just to protect the team to keep any reporters that we had not ok’d or any bystanders from let in. So it was my job to throw the guys out,” she cackles.

If Betty Ling helped open the door in Gainesville and subsequently around the country, Emily Cronin née Heater slipped in and took it off its hinges.

From 2006 until 2009 she served in a role that was technically referred to as a program assistant. It was only supposed to last a couple of months while someone was on medical leave but the staff liked her and soon she was given a heap of responsibilities under the recruiting umbrella.

“I was in charge of kind of the on-campus recruiting, so I did official visits, unofficial visits, junior days, helped out the coaches with their travel during recruiting evaluations, just kind of did a lot of the administrative aspects of recruiting,” Cronin tells ITG.

Over this time she recalls Meyer having several recruiting coordinators, including her father, former Florida assistant coach, and current support staff member, Chuck Heater. While the title floated from person to person, Cronin and her team kept up the quality of work. To now see the title accompanying the work in the form of Lee Begley is what Emily always hoped would happen one day.

“Historically that has been typically a male role. My three years there, I think [Meyer] had three or four different recruiting coordinators and I just think it’s great, because I do feel like women in recruiting, our roles have expanded and gotten so large, I think it’s great to be rewarded with a title that really represents truly what women in recruiting a lot of times do.”

What they did and still do is often the work that will go unnoticed except by those walking past their doors every day. But it’s those peaks behind the curtain that Cronin feels made a difference in how this role has evolved over the years. For example, Dan Mullen was walking the halls under Ben Hill Griffin Stadium while both Betty Ling and Emily Heater were there and the way he’s assembled his staff now is something Cronin doesn’t think happened by accident.

“I think a lot of it is just changing the perspective. I think you have a younger generation now, for instance Coach Mullen, obviously he was an assistant coach when I was working in Coach Meyer’s staff so he had that experience coming up as a young coach, seeing women taking on greater responsibilities in recruiting and I think part of that is the generational change that’s happening.

“You see more coaches coming in and they understand the importance of having women in those recruiting responsibilities and role and really just rewarding women and acknowledging the important role that they play within the football department. And I think it’s wonderful to see a lot of those roadblocks are starting to be torn down by women who are coming in and really just doing an outstanding job in their role and kind of making that path a little bit easier for women to pursue.”

Then there’s Rachel Smallwood.

Rachel wanted to go into events and had a public relations degree to accompany the dream. After deciding to go back to school for her Masters, she met some of the coaching staff at Alabama through mutual friends. They asked if she’d like to work as a G.A. in the office and it seemed like a good way to help pay for her Master schooling. She never could have imagined the change she would wrought.

Starting in 2007 with head coach Nick Saban, Smallwood came in as a G.A. that first year, put her head down and worked hard at a job she quickly grew to love. After her first year Saban sat her down and asked seemingly a simple question that held with it a weight of trust.

“Coach and I sat down and he said if you could do this and I let you design your role, what would it look like? And so together we drafted up what my job description would be and it was, I couldn’t have asked for anything better. It ended up being the perfect job and the perfect opportunity. I loved it.”

That job description became the recruiting operations coordinator, in charge of all on-campus recruiting. As Rachel recalls it for ITG, “once they stepped foot on campus, that was my responsibility.”

That trust from Saban and the coaching staff was something that Smallwood admits she was a bit naïve about at the time, not fully realizing the significance it would have on the shape of women’s role in college football. It wasn’t until others started asking about her role that she understood what she was doing was different, akin to only a very few like Ling or Heater/Cronin at Florida.

“It was very, very male dominated and everyone that we met—recruits and different coaches that would come in to work our camps or come to clinic, they would say ‘what do you do’ and I would tell them and they would say ‘we’ve never seen this before or what is this?’ So it was very, it was awesome.

“I heard from so many people, ‘this is not common place, we’ve never seen a girl doing this role on campus.’ After that time I think a lot of people saw that it was good to have someone extra that could help in a different way, almost have a female perspective. Just men trying to figure out what that looks like, to bring a family and have moms involved, it was very helpful to have a female perspective. So we might have been one of the first schools that did it but they’re everywhere now and I think it’s so wonderful because it’s opened up this brand new industry.”

That’s what Lee Davis Begley stepped into when she took a student job in the football office after transferring to Alabama. And looking back, that was the first time she realized she could shape her future in this field.

“I saw Rachel do it and she was really good at it and something I’m like ‘I think I can learn from her, train with her’; I’ve been around football my whole life and it was a chance to be involved and be in a unique side of it.”

Wanting to do it and actually finding the way are mutually exclusive though and Smallwood points out it takes someone willing to push barriers to push their way into a world that for so long was open to only a select few.

“You would look at it and think there’s this glass ceiling, I see where it is and I would love to be able to push it harder but I’m really not sure how far I can push. So it’s really awesome just to see what Lee has been able to do in her job…just from watching her and hearing about this relationship between her and Coach Mullen, he respects her opinion and values her in a way that most, across the board it’s traditionally been hard to push a women into that position but if anyone were to be able to break through that ceiling, I think it would be her because of the way their trust has been built.

“Just from her coming in and starting in a good strong recruiting role, but him seeing the value in this position and letting her take the reins on so many things. But she’s also that kind of worker. She gets it, she understands what you need…in that role you always have to be one step ahead and she’s that so I don’t see why in the world it wouldn’t be a woman. I think traditionally it’s been a man because that’s where people are comfortable but it could be either way.”

There are few things that can cause a place to become stagnant like comfortability, so for it really to be either way like Smallwood mentioned, these programs needed a voice on the other side to say “we need to do something different.” Because as much change that can come about from a determined individual pushing, the stark reality is that often takes an ally across the way to help pull as well. And for as many intersecting parts in this story that worked together to get Lee Begley and college football to this point—from Dan Mullen working with Betty Ling and Emily Cronin, to Lee Begley working with Rachel Smallwood and taking those lessons to Mississippi State then bringing them back to Florida—there’s one thread that binds them all.

Which brings us to Geoff Collins.

The current Georgia Tech head football coach served as the Gators defensive coordinator from 2015-2016. But he spent the 2007 season at Alabama as the Director of Player Personnel. While there he saw the need for someone like Rachel Smallwood in the Crimson Tide football office so decided to make the change as the one responsible for her hire.

“He was very much I feel like on my team and a proponent of me moving up and moving forward,” recalls Smallwood.

“He’s very cautious, that is one thing I will say about Geoff. He likes people who work hard but if he sees that you will do that, he’ll go to the wall for you and that’s what I feel like he did for me and because he did that for me, I think it helped to bring on a lot of the other girls that were in that office at that time to see, ‘you know what this is an opportunity that we can have, that we can do’ and he’s done it for other people since then.”

One of those other people was Lee Begley. By the time Begley graduated from Alabama and began applying for jobs, Collins was the defensive coordinator at Mississippi State with Dan Mullen.

“So I think my first title was the recruiting specialist there,” says Begley.

“Kind of the same stuff, but there was no position. They created that position for me there. There was no woman in the recruiting role there so I was the first one…[but] there was a job open—and Geoff Collins I think convinced Coach Mullen like ‘hey we need a woman in this role.’ So I got the interview and got the job.”

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Back in Gainesville, with the meeting over, Begley heads to her office, passing the quarterback's meeting now in progress and towards the middle of the long hallway tucked underneath the stands in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. She sits halfway between Mullen’s office and those of the assistant coaches, across from the recruiting staff members, perfectly centered to be on hand for the stream of people who stop by her office all day. For every question she has an answer, for every issue a solution, there for every person who pops their head in the door while juggling two phones. She’s talking on one while texting on the other, handling the day’s biggest problem: how to best make the sister of a prospect feel comfortable during the upcoming visit weekend. Once that’s handled, she changes clothes and heads out to practice.

It’s a small microcosm of what she does day to day. The high-pressure job is made easier thanks to her big laugh and bigger smile, punctuating the long hours no matter the situation. The nature of being saddled with a high profile title at a high profile school like Florida means she’s been recognized more—even being asked for an autograph at a game last season, something that still makes her laugh unbelievingly when recalling—but that recognition along with that pressure is a privilege. It means there are a lot more eyes on her now including those of a young kid, maybe even a young girl, who sees their dream in a clearer focus thanks to the path she’s now helped further pave.

Asked if she’s a trailblazer, Begley sits back with a thoughtful look on her face, letting her eyes drift while she tosses the word around with contemplation, thinking of those that have helped her get here as well, before answering softly but with conviction.

“I don’t view myself like that but I would hope that someone who wanted to do it would look at me and say ‘oh wow I can do it because she’s in that position.’”