Seven years ago, Travis Dauro was a senior at Strong Rock Christian School and just finished his last season as a player in the Georgia High School Association’s smallest classification.

  Less than two weeks ago, he was on football’s biggest stage, attending Super Bowl LIV as a member of the San Francisco 49ers front office.

  His title is college scouting coordinator for the NFC champions, joining the team a few months after the current regime, led by head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch, was formed. It is the latest step in a journey that began at the University of Georgia, and he hopes his final stop many years from now will be the role of general manager for an NFL team.

  After playing football a couple of years in high school, he had neck surgery that kept him from most positions on the field as a senior. However, with a background in soccer, he was able to be the Patriots’ kicker in the fall of 2012. He knew then that he wanted to be involved in football as a career, but not in the way he ultimately did it.

  “In high school I wanted to go into journalism,” he said. “Then, as I was getting ready to go to college, I started reading some books. One in particular is called ‘The War Room,’ and it is about the career paths of several general managers in the NFL and how a team is built. That intrigued me much more.”

  Realizing that he needed to go to an in-state school that’s a high-profile football program, he knew that the state’s flagship university in Athens was the obvious choice. Once he got on campus, he stated looking for any opportunity he could find. As a freshman he started in the athletics department’s media relations office, but not with football.

  “It was the women’s soccer team,” he said. “During the games, I would call the substitutions up to the box whenever they would come into the game. I let them know that if there were any opportunities in football, I’d love to help out there.”

  That came when he started working at football practice, helping guide the visiting media to where they could do their jobs most effectively and wrangling players whose presence was requested for interviews. An attempt to move into better position at the start of his sophomore year was an unexpected turning point.

  “It was really by accident,” he said. “I was expecting to meet the video director and it wound up being the recruiting director. It ended up being a perfect storm. I knew I wanted to get into recruiting and I thought video would be a good angle. When I talked to the recruiting director, I found out they were looking to expand their department, so I came in for an interview and they hired me.”

  His time with the football program overlapped the Mark Richt and Kirby Smart eras, although he left the year before the Bulldogs reached the NCAA championship game. But the experience he gained in Athens laid the groundwork for a move to the NFL after graduation.

  “I learned that a lot of it is really networking and the particular experience you get,” he said. “My boss at Georgia was actually with Coach Smart when he was back at Alabama, and I learned a lot of the stuff I know now in terms of personnel.”

  The recruiting department at Georgia was set up and operated very similar to a pro scouting department, with the same terminology and a comparable amount of hard work. Dauro actually graduated from Georgia a semester early, in December of 2016, so he would be free to work full-time with the recruiting department during the busy season that included National Signing Day. It also allowed him to pursue a full-time NFL job without interruption.

  “It was also a matter of meeting the correct people,” according to Dauro. “A guy who interned with the 49ers and then got a job at Georgia put me in touch with the right people to help me get the job there. He knew that I was interested in scouting, so he told them, ‘I’ve got a guy here who is about to graduate and wants to get into scouting. You should give him an interview.’ It was that networking angle that got me the interview, and the rest is history.”

  Dauro moved to the West coast, after living in McDonough since five years of age, and began his career as a scouting assistant. From the beginning, most of his work has focused on the college game. With the 49ers headquarters in close proximity to Stanford, San Jose State and the University of California at Berkeley, Dauro and his peers attended every home game of those teams the past three years. He has seen two games in one day from those locales.

  “Back then I also helped with pros, but now I am primarily in the college market,” he said of his current duties. “The scouts who go to the games across the country collect a lot of information, and I am the point of contact for the department. A lot of the facilitation comes through me, but mainly I help with efficiency. I help organize a lot of the college meetings, and I am the right-hand man to the director of college scouting, helping all of these guys out and making their jobs easier as much as I can.”

  For those who don’t follow the NFL closely, the 49ers had a near-disastrous 2018 season, losing several key players to injury and limping to a 4-12 record. The recent Super Bowl appearance only a year later marks a historic turnaround. It’s a special feeling for anyone who played a part in it.

  “It is incredible. I guess in the eyes of a scout, it is kind of everything you dream about,” said Dauro. “Obviously you would like to come in and win right away, but being a part of building that team and contributing to its success through a bit of adversity has been fun. It has been stressful; last year was tough year but this year made it all worth it.”

  But that was then. Working in an NFL front office is a 12-month job, and work has already begun in preparation for the scouting combine, an annual event where the top prospects for the upcoming draft assemble in Indianapolis to show their physical and mental skills for representatives of every team.

  “The combine, now that I am working strictly with college, is one of my babies,” said Dauro. “It’s what we’ve been working on right now. Really we’ve been doing combine prep since December because it is such a big event. The combine, the pro days and the all-star games have been a large part of my work the past few months.”

  Time will tell whether the work on the field and in the front office pays off with another trip to the Super Bowl this time next year.