Kirby Smart dedicates Georgia win over Florida to Dooley family
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Georgia won 42-20 over Florida, a style that the late Vince Dooley would have loved. Kirby Smart even said so after the game, telling the CBS broadcast crew, “This win goes to Coach Dooley.”
“To the Dooleys back home in Athens, I know they’re together, it meant a lot for us to win that game for them and for all that Vince has meant to our University as such an ambassador to our program and really for all of college football,” Smart said in his postgame press conference. “I know if he was looking down on that one he would have enjoyed the first half. I don’t know if he would have enjoyed the second one. He and Erk (Russell) probably had a laugh together about it.”
Smart, a graduate of the University of Georgia and former player for the Bulldogs, understands the impact of a person like Dooley about as well as anybody possibly could. He grew up in the state of Georgia. When he was a player, Dooley was the athletic director. Now he has the same pressure that Dooley did as a coach between the hedges.
“I had got to visit with him last week a little last week and sat down. He was in the training room and we got to talk for a little while and of course I didn’t know that would be the last time. That’s probably my fondest memory because even then he was telling stories about Georgia Football,” Smart shared. “He’s been around my family. He’s been in the box during these SEC championships and National Championships and my kids have gotten to be around him. It’s funny because my kids had no idea. ‘Who’s the old coach? Who’s the old guy, you know?’ Now they know. They know the history and what all he stood for and what his family did for this university. I’ve got a lot of respect for him.”
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“Just an incredible job, someone so wise and classy and he’s really a person of the arts. You don’t find that in our profession and it’s really cool and unique just who he is and how he’s treated everybody,” he added. “What’s cool to me is I see all the social media, there’s not one person I look at on social media from Twitter to Facebook that doesn’t have a picture with him. And they all post the picture with him. And it’s their memory of him. He touched every life in the state and just did so much for our program.”
Dooley is Georgia’s winningest football coach with 201 victories, six SEC titles and the 1980 national championship in his 25 years leading the Bulldogs (1964-88). He was also the recipient of numerous awards for his service as director of athletics over a 25 year tenure (1979-2004). A member of the College Football Hall of Fame, as well as the Georgia and Alabama Sports Halls of Fame, Dooley is survived by his wife of 62 years, Barbara, and four children, Deanna, Daniel, Denise, and Derek.
