The tenure of one of the University of Georgia’s longest-serving, most beloved, and most outstanding employees ever ended Jan. 31 with the retirement of Claude Felton.
He served UGA’s athletics association for 45 years in several job capacities, but primarily as sports information and communications director.
Practically a national legend, Felton is regarded by knowledgeable observers as the best-ever in the collegiate sports publicity profession. Not long after his start in the field, he became the standard by which collegiate sports publicists have been measured.
Felton is the primary reason UGA’s Sports Information and Communications department has received zenith respect nationwide. Very few colleges or universities, regardless of size, have had someone as extensively involved in their athletics program as Felton was at UGA.
His impact was monumental and cannot be overstated. And he always has conducted himself in a first-class manner and represented UGA with the highest degree of integrity.
Ably aided by a staff of full-time, part-time, and student assistants, Felton’s primary responsibility was to chronicle and disseminate information about UGA intercollegiate sports teams, student-athletes, coaches, and others involved with its sports programs to media on local, state, regional, and national levels, as well as to Bulldog fans and all others who requested it. He was most proficient at distributing data about the Bulldogs’ positive, newsworthy deeds.
Negative news happenings involving UGA Athletics during Felton’s tenure were rare, but he responded to them in a direct, honest, and benevolent manner, too.
Felton truly was the consummate professional in his post – meticulously organized, thorough, and accurate at handling details – and he performed his job with an objective approach. He held encyclopedic knowledge about UGA Sports and remains its ultimate historian.
Felton also stressed the importance of devoting proper attention to all UGA sports – not just the glamorous ones like football and basketball. Specifically, he made sure Bulldog women’s sports received publicity on par with the men.
During his tenure as sports information and communications director, Bulldog teams won 136 Southeastern Conference (SEC) titles and 47 National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) National Championships.
He was a part of three football national championships, seven conference football championships, and in 1983 UGA men’s basketball’s only Final Four appearance when the Bulldogs beat two teams that had been ranked number one in the nation that season: 70-67 over St. John’s in the Eastern Regional semi-finals and then defending national champion North Carolina 82-77 in the regional final.
Felton directed the publicity efforts for numerous All-Americans and individual honorees, most notably the Heisman Trophy campaign for 1982 winner Herschel Walker.
He was a trusted friend and a professional and personal adviser to UGA coaches, athletes, and administrators. Felton often recalls the exploits of top UGA coaches like Vince Dooley, Hugh Durham, Jack Bauerle, Kirby Smart, and Manuel Diaz, as well as those of the greatest athletes to play for the Bulldogs, including Walker, Buck Belue, Jimmy Payne, Terry Hoage, Kevin Butler, David Pollack, Todd Gurley, Aaron Murray, Stetson Bennett, Dominique Wilkins, Vern Fleming, and Katrina McClain.
But equally special to Felton are the athletes whose names don’t evoke as much fanfare as the star performers, but who nevertheless made contributions of various sorts to their respective Bulldog teams. He made sure they were also well-publicized for their efforts.
A Savannah native, Felton enrolled at UGA in 1967 and received an Associate Bachelor’s degree in 1970 and a Master of Arts in 1971 from the Henry Grady School of Journalism.
Felton worked as a summer intern sports reporter and briefly as a news reporter for the Savannah Morning News (1971). He then worked in various media and public relations posts at Georgia Southern College (now University) in Statesboro, where he also served from 1972-75 as an assistant tennis coach.
Dooley, then UGA athletics director for sports, hired Felton in 1979 as the school’s sports information director. After Dooley became sole athletics director in 1981, serving in the post until 2004, he rewarded Felton for his work with job promotions four times, culminating with him also being named senior associate athletics director for External Affairs, a role in which he served four years (2000-2004) and not only oversaw the sports information department but also the athletics ticket and development offices.
Dooley, also UGA’s head football coach from 1964-1988, once called Felton “the first, and most important administrative hire I made.” Many had hoped Felton would become UGA’s athletics director when Dooley retired in 2004, but thankfully he still worked 20 more years as its chief sports publicist.
Felton served as media coordinator for 18 NCAA national championship events held at UGA and was the host of Sports Information Director for the 1977 NCAA Men’s Final Four basketball tournament in Atlanta. He also was a member of press liaison staff for various Olympic Games, including in 1984 in Los Angeles, and as press venue chief for soccer at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games held at UGA.
Additionally, Felton was chairman of the Ethics Committee of the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA, 1985-91) and chairman of the organization’s Olympic Liaison Committee (1992-95).
Felton began his work during the era when only a select few college football games were televised, as newspapers and radio generally provided most media coverage for sports events. He then saw the explosion of sports on television to the growth of media covering college athletics to the Internet’s role in them, much of which is currently website and social media featured.
He also witnessed photojournalism evolve from film-based cameras to the age of video technology, to self-mass communication of digital photographs. Successfully handling the seemingly ever-changing media world was almost a continual job for Felton at UGA.
As a result, he upgraded many services provided by UGA Sports Communications (formerly Sports Information), and nobody in the sports information business built a better relationship than Felton with college football broadcasting executives, announcers, and production workers, as well as with newspaper, specialty publications, online, and other journalists and media professionals.
Felton and his UGA staff were honored with dozens of national and regional awards from the College Sports Information Directors of America for the slick and superlative media guides, game programs, and related publications they produced.
Another example of the astute work of Felton and his staff is provided by the Football Writers Association of America in its “Super 11” listings of the top eleven sports information departments in the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (major college level). Georgia received “Super 11” recognition six times from its inception in 2009 through Felton’s last football season as Sports Information and Communications Director (2023).
Selection criteria include how efficiently press boxes/ operations are operated; quality and timeliness of information provided; the amount of information presented and how appropriately it’s updated on websites; personal responsiveness to media inquiries as well as the accessibility of players and head and assistant coaches; and how well the sports information departments go the “extra mile” in servicing the media.
Fortunately for UGA, Felton will remain a consultant and advisor to its athletics department. He also will continue to assist with historical and archival projects and with SEC and NCAA championship events hosted by UGA. Additionally, he will continue to serve on the NCAA Men’s Final Four Media Coordination Committee, a role he has filled since 1995.
Felton reached the pinnacle accomplishment of his professional career on July 4, 2001, when he was inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame, followed by receiving CoSIDA’s next most prestigious honor in 2004, the Arch Ward Award, presented annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the college sports information field.
Additionally, Felton was the 2008 recipient of the Football Writers Association of America’s (FWAA) Bert McGrane Award, presented to an FWAA member who has performed great service to the organization and the writing profession. Felton was honored with the award in conjunction with the National Football Foundation’s Hall of Fame induction weekend in South Bend, Ind., when his name was placed in the College Football Hall of Fame’s rotunda.
Felton also was inducted in 2005 into his hometown Greater Savannah Athletics Hall of Fame, and most recently he was enshrined in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame (2024) and given a Special Achievement Award on March 8 by the Maxwell Football Club in honor of his 45 years of service to UGA Athletics and collegiate sports during its annual national awards ceremony at the College Football Hall of Fame’s new location in Atlanta.
Truly, Felton is a Southern gentleman whose genuineness and friendly personality endear him to those with whom he comes in contact. He is a great family man, married to the former Cathy Turner of Athens, who also is retired after serving many years as an administrative assistant in UGA’s Crop and Soil Sciences College.
Claude and Cathy have three children, Robyn, Christopher, and Patrick, along with two grandchildren – Carter Christopher and Luke Felton – sons of Christopher and his wife, the former Katie MacKelcan.
Robyn, a 2000 Samford University graduate, is currently chief operating officer for the Knight Eady Sports Marketing and Event Management Company in Birmingham, Ala., while Christopher, a 2004 UGA graduate, was a former administrative intern to Dooley and a certified athletics trainer for the Bulldogs.
He attended medical school in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and currently is a physician specializing in family and sports medicine in Charlotte, N.C. Patrick, a 2009 UGA graduate, works in event management for the Mississippi State University Athletics Department in Starkville, Miss.
What Claude Felton accomplished for UGA is of colossal and historic proportions. He is owed much thanks for all he’s done for those who work in the media, and for many thousands – maybe millions – of Georgia Bulldog fans.