I’d be less than disingenuous if I said I didn’t dance a little jig when I heard the news that Michael Adams was stepping down as president of the University of Georgia.

I am not a fan, have never been a fan, and am looking forward to some new blood in the administration in Athens.

Early in his tenure, Adams came across as conceited, arrogant and insecure. His decision to force Vince Dooley out — he never gave a decent reason why Georgia needed a new athletic director — always struck me as being more about not wanting someone more popular and beloved in a subordinate position.

Make no mistake, I am unabashedly a Dooley fan. He was hired as football coach in 1964, the same year I was born, and as far as I'm concerned, he's as much a part of the University of Georgia as the arch and Uga.

When I was a kid, we had a Boston terrier that we named Dooley. Laugh if you must, but I can't think of much higher praise than having a dog named after you.

I know of at least two dogs today that are named Dooley. I don’t know a single dog named Adams.

But also understand this: As president of the University of Georgia, Michael Adams has the absolute right to hire the people he wants around him. If he wants a new athletic director or a new provost and a new janitor in the administration building, he has the right to make that change.

I don't fault Adams for having an ego. You don't rise to such position of authority — be it a college president or a newspaper editor — without some degree of ego. But it is the arrogance with which he handled the issue that will always bother me.

All of that said, I don't think Adams has been a horrible president for UGA. He's a terrific fundraiser, which is needed in these days of dwindling state support for higher education. He has successfully refocused the university on its research mission.

He has been in office when the university's academic standards have risen to their highest level, although I believe Zell Miller’s idea for the HOPE scholarship deserves as much credit for Georgia’s growing academic reputation as anything.

Then there was the decision to ban tailgating on North Campus. A lot of folks wanted to burn Adams at the stake for that decision. I wasn’t one of them. I actually agreed with him that tailgaters ought to learn to clean up after themselves and stop trashing a beautiful part of campus.

I wrote as much in a column in March 2010. A few days after that column appeared, my phone rang. It was Michael Adams. At the end of the call, he asked if I wanted to talk about any other issue that bothered me.

I politely declined. My friends thought I was crazy and they provided a litany of topics I should have broached.

But I was impressed that he had called. And I was more impressed that he was willing to discuss a topic I suspect he knew involved Dooley.

I have nothing substantive to base this on, but I suspect Adams has mellowed a bit over the years, perhaps learning from the battles with Dooley and with others.

That’s why I hope in the next year before he officially steps down, Adams will admit publicly what I think he believes privately – that he handled the Dooley matter poorly, that he could have reached his ultimate goal of a new AD without unnecessarily dividing the Georgia people.

There would be no shame in that admission. Even had Adams handled the Dooley conflict differently, not much would be different today. Dooley surely would have stayed on a bit longer. But Greg McGarity would be the athletic director today. Mark Richt would still be the football coach.

And Adams wouldn’t be remembered now as the man who divided the Bulldog Nation.

Mitch Clarke is executive editor of The Times. His column appears Sundays. Read previous columns at gainesvilletimes.com/mitch. Follow him on Twitter @MitchTimes.