Daily briefing: Remembering national title-winning and Hall of Fame coach Vince Dooley

Ivan Maisel’s “Daily Briefing” for On3:

+ As an adolescent, Vince Dooley, the College Football Hall of Fame coach who died Friday at the age of 90, planted himself next to the enormous radio console in his family’s living room in Mobile, Ala., on Saturday afternoons to listen to the exploits of Heisman winners like Johnny Lujack of Notre Dame and Doak Walker of SMU. Dooley became a two-sport star at Auburn as a back in football and a guard in basketball. Dooley graduated in 1954; a decade later, he stood on Georgia’s sideline as coach, a 31-year-old whose team lost his debut 31-3 to Bear Bryant’s Alabama. Two years later, Bryant’s Tide shared the 1966 SEC championship with Dooley’s Dawgs.

+ Dooley won six SEC titles, including three during the Herschel Walker years (1980-82), when Georgia went 33-3. The Dawgs finished No. 1 in 1980, lost the next season to national champion Clemson, then lost the 1982 national championship in the Sugar Bowl to Penn State. Dooley retired in 1988 with a record of 201-77-10 (.715). That 200^th victory came against cross-state rival Georgia Tech. Dooley beat his biggest rivals as regularly as he beat everyone else. He went 18-7 (.720) vs. Tech and 17-7-1 (.700) vs. Florida. He won with a ground game and defense, which frustrated his national championship-winning quarterback, Buck Belue. Like every other quarterback, Belue liked to pass and pleaded with Dooley to do so. “He finally said to me, at the end of one of those meetings, ‘Why don’t you just look at the pitch sweep as a completed pass?’ ” Belue said.

+ Dooley remained at Georgia as athletic director until 2004. For years, when I needed an administrator to comment with common sense and intelligence, I called Dooley. He spoke slowly, with logic and precision. Often, the answer came with a bonus of dry humor. On the topic of keeping the Florida-Georgia game in Jacksonville, an issue for Kirby Smart now just as it was for Mark Richt then: “Mark is not so keen on being in Jacksonville,” Dooley said. “He thinks it’s (in) Florida. We used to say it was an extension of south Georgia.” In spring 2003, as Alabama dithered over whether to fire recently hired football coach Mike Price because of his indiscreet behavior, I asked Dooley for an ESPN story about being an administrator in an uncomfortable predicament. Dooley had just fired men’s basketball coach Jim Harrick because of academic fraud. “The point is if they think he shouldn’t be the coach,” Dooley said. “If they think that, then he shouldn’t be the coach. They’ve got to answer that question. Can they justify keeping him? If they do, you can say it’s a bad time to let him go or whatever. If they don’t want him, it doesn’t make any difference.” Four days later, Alabama fired Price.

+ Dooley stayed physically active until his last months. More important, he stayed mentally active. His interests extended well beyond the football field. He became a master gardener – that’s a thing – and wrote a book on horticulture. He devoured history and co-edited a 2017 book of letters written by a Civil War colonel from Georgia. Dooley lived long enough to see Georgia win another national championship, 41 years after he led the Dawgs to No. 1. Nine months later, he is gone.