RIP Vince Dooley

Just hours before the Cocktail Party, according to a Tweet first credited to the AJC.

Man, this Gator is saddened by that news. He made the Dawgs into a powerhouse and to beat Georgia with him running the show truly meant something, especially watching Dickey/Cheatin' Charley and Fat Ass Galen Hall get boatraced nearly every year.

Glad he was able to celebrate that long-anticipated "next" National Championship before he passed.

RIP, Coach. Damn Good Dawg.

 

WSB/AJC with the quick obit:


ATHENS, Ga. — Former University of Georgia coach and Athletic Director Vince Dooley -- the heart of the Bulldog Nation -- has died.

Dooley died Friday at his home in Athens. He was 90 years old.

“Legendary former University of Georgia football coach and director of athletics Vince Dooley died peacefully at his home in the presence of his wife and their four children Friday afternoon at the age of 90,” the university said in a statement. “A member of the College Football Hall of Fame, as well as the Georgia and Alabama Sports Halls of Fame, 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).”

Dooley was hospitalized with a mild case of COVID-19 in early October, but was released from on Oct. 12. His cause of death has not been released.

Dooley may have been born in Alabama and educated at Auburn, but he lived and died a Georgia Bulldog.

His death ends what many considered to be the golden age of UGA sports.

Georgia hired the virtual unknown to be its head coach back in 1963.

Dooley resisted coaching at first, thinking it “an insecure business.” He had an offer to go into banking when he left the Marine Corps, and only after some hesitation did he take a job on Shug Jordan’s staff at Auburn. Even then he was readying himself.

He spent five years tutoring quarterbacks and then asked to take charge of the freshman team, just to see if he could actually coach.

Over the next 25 years, he won six SEC titles and one national championship.

That came in 1980, with freshman tailback Herschel Walker leading the way.

It was Georgia’s first national championship since 1942.

When Lindsay Scott caught the famous 93-yard touchdown pass from Buck Belue to beat Florida in Jacksonville that same year, Dooley ran step for step with Scott for nearly 40 yards.

Years later, Dooley became athletic director and, under his guidance, UGA’s sports programs rose to national prominence.

The school won 20 national championships and 77 SEC titles.

He fought for women’s athletics, oversaw seven Sanford Stadium expansion projects and was instrumental in bringing the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games to Athens.

Dooley and his wife, Barbara, raised two sons, Daniel and Derek, and two daughters, Deanna and Denise. They were a football family, living in a football town.

Football was all-consuming for Dooley. It separated him from his family. During the season, he would eat one meal a week at home and then flit back to the office. Barbara Dooley acknowledges that she basically raised the children by herself. “We just knew,” Deanna said, “that he couldn’t be at all our stuff.”

Summer vacations were focused to a fault. Determined to cram everything possible into a fortnight, Dooley would stop at every historical marker. “It was fun,” his son Daniel Dooley said, “and then it became not fun. We’d be saying, ‘OK, Dad. Just get us to the beach.’”

Dooley had considered running for governor as a conservative Democrat in 1990, and he hired a political consultant. But he kept waking up feeling there “was something wrong,” he said. “Mentally, I wanted to do it.” Emotionally, he decided, he did not.

Dooley retired in June 2004 at the age of 71 after a very controversial power struggle with the university’s president.

He wasn’t ready to leave UGA when he did, and said, “We always say, and it’s so true, that the highs are never as high as the lows are low.”

He remained the face of Georgia football and a staple in the Athens community

Dooley will always be Georgia, and the Bulldog Nation wouldn’t have it any other way.

Mark Bradley with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this article.

 

20 national championships? in about 150 years of college football there's been at least 300 national champs.

 

I think that's during his tenure as AD and all Georgia athletics. Even the most ardent Jawja fans I know don't believe UGA can claim any oblong ball titles between 1980 and 2021.

 

I've known him most of my life and he was always a gentleman and always had interests that extended way beyond sports. He even wrote a book about his passion for gardening.

RIP to a good man.

 

Gotcha.

 

Always liked this from Tommy Tomlinson:

Between the Hedges with Vince Dooley

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-...ll-coach-vince-dooley-narrates-new-walker-ad/

No good deed goes unpunished.

 

Thanks for the link.

Tommy is damn good.

 

Knoxville rewrite:

"Vince Dooley, the legendary Georgia coach whose son, Derek, exacerbated Tennessee's fall into college football's abyss for several years, has died. He was 90."

 

If you asked me as a child for an example of swingers, I might have told you it was Vince Dooley and Pat Dye crossing the state line to coach at the other’s alma mater.

 

Didn’t he endorse herschel this week? Was that the tipping point for his death?