The Scholar

If you ever meet Vince Dooley, make sure you get him to sing you a little Eddie Arnold.“He sang a song called ‘The Cattle Call,’” recalls Dooley. “It’s most unusual.”The cattle are prowlin', the coyotes are howlin'Way out where the doggies roamWhere spurs are a jinglin' and the cowboy is singingHis lonesome cattle callNever heard of it?“Google it,” Dooley says.Forever ago, in a dank locker room in Nashville after a Georgia victory over Vanderbilt, the yodeling crooner—Arnold himself—made an appearance. Dooley remembers: “So I quieted the team and stood in front of them and said, ‘Boys, I have a special treat for you. I’d like to introduce to you a great singer…Eddie Arnold!'”Crickets.“They just looked,” recalls Dooley, face twisting into a stupefied countenance, followed by a laugh.Today Dooley, an older, wiser facsimile of the coach who introduced Eddy Arnold so long ago to his fine Georgia football team, is dressed superbly in a white button down, red silk tie, navy blazer, and slacks. He sits in a chair in a stadium box overlooking the finely-cut field at Kennesaw State University just north of Atlanta, wags a fountain Coke in between questions, ice shhh-shhhing in the paper cup.For the last several years, Dooley has served as a consultant for the Kennesaw State football team, beginning play next season in the 8,318-seat, yellow chair back Fifth Third Bank Stadium, under head coach Brian Bohannon (a Dooley disciple).Seventy-plus years ago on the pavements of Mobile, Dooley began his football career, a joyous respite from the tempest of the Great Depression.“We played football in the streets, between cars,” says Dooley. Shhh-shhh.Dooley, who attended McGill Catholic High School in Mobile, grew up a Notre Dame fan, but didn’t attend his first college game until he was 16. “Back in those days, you followed football on the radio. My first college game to actually go to was Auburn-Clemson in Mobile at Ladd Stadium in 1948.”College football wasn’t quite the same as it is now, with a handful of coliseums soaking in as many adorers as there are people in Erie, Pennsylvania. “I’ll tell you how football was back then. Auburn played in front of 14,000 people that day, but when McGill played rival Murphy, there were 17,500 there that night.”Dooley eventually toted those childhood images to Auburn, where he played quarterback from 1951-54, and roomed with future Alabama governor Fob James. After his playing days, he served for two years in the U.S. Marines, and returned to Auburn as an assistant coach under Ralph “Shug” Jordan. Dooley coached at Auburn from 1956 to 1963, instructing such greats as Tucker Frederickson and Jimmy Sidle. A lifelong historian, Dooley completed his Master’s degree in history during that time.In ’64, he was hired as the head coach at Georgia. “To understand the importance of school loyalty, many Auburn fans thought I took a demotion, going from the head coach of the Auburn freshman team to the head coach at Georgia,” Dooley says.Dooley’s hire at Georgia was more of an appointment, as A.D. Joel Eaves—granted full autonomy—installed the green but eager coach, much to the chagrin of fans. “With my qualifications, I would not have hired myself,” Dooley says. Shhh-shhh.Inheriting a Georgia team that had endured three consecutive losing campaigns under Johnny Griffith, Dooley’s first order of business (besides winning) was to brush up on Dawg tradition.“I totally committed myself to Georgia,” Dooley says. “Even though there was doubt about my hire. I wanted to know, learn about their tradition.”So Dooley became a UGA scholar, reading up on men who helped brand the Georgia label: Maxwell Trophy winner and jump-passing specialist Charlie Trippi, the 5’11, 180 lb. Dawg dynamo Frank Sinkwich (1942 Heisman trophy winner), and the babyfaced terror, Head Ball Coach Wally Butts.Dooley was introduced to the head coaching world in 1964 with a 31-3 throttling courtesy of Alabama and their slick quarterback named Joe. “Namath barely got dirt on his uniform,” says Dooley.But Georgia promptly won seven out of its next ten games with platooning quarterbacks Lynn Hughes and Preston Ridlehuber (there’s a name for you), finishing the season at 7-3-1 with a victory in the Sun Bowl in El Paso against Texas Tech. More importantly, in the rivalry known as “Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate,” the Bulldogs reversed a three-year curse against Georgia Tech by offing the Yellowjackets 7-0 in Athens.Shhh-shhh. In his second season (’65), the Dawgs beat Michigan and eventual national champion Alabama—sans Namath—18-17 at Sanford Stadium in Athens. Dooley recalls a spring coaches meeting after that season held in sunny Florida. “[Bear] Bryant was on the telephone, talking loudly to a stock broker,” says Dooley. “My wife Barbara, who was 24 at the time, makes a comment to me, and Bryant turned to her and quipped, ‘Young lady, don’t forget. I’m the man who made your husband famous.’”In ’66, Dooley found his form and established full credibility with fans, leading Georgia SEC Championship and a 10-1 record- its only loss on October 14 in Orange Bowl Stadium against Miami, 7-6. The Bulldogs finished fourth in the country.Dooley’s Dawg Chow for success was simple: get good players, run an organized and disciplined team, play defense, run the ball, and have a good kicking game. Over the next fifteen years, Dooley would establish Georgia as “Tailback U,” punctuated in 1980 with perhaps the greatest player in the history of college football, Herschel Walker.Dooley says that over the years Georgia gained many fans because of television, but perhaps even more tradition was being established on the radio. While Americans were slogging through the bloody weeds of Vietnam, Georgia hired an eccentric Minnesotan named Larry Munson, who would be the passionate opinion of the Bulldogs for the next 44 years as radio announcer. Munson was the quintessential homer, coining the phrase “hunker down” and exciting fans with his soundbyte-slathered discourse.Dooley remembers Munson as a folk hero, and recounts a story when the frequently pessimistic, cigar-tugging Munson cornered him before a game outside the team bus and said, “How we gon’ stop their wide receivers, Coach?”“I said, ‘Get away from me, Munson!” says Dooley with a smile. Shhh-shhh. “He also fished like he called a game. He’d say, ‘Hunker down, worm.’ He was a great part of the Georgia legacy.”But the honor of Top Dawg must go to the thick-thighed dreadnought from Johnson County, Georgia, Herschel Junior Walker. In Walker’s freshman year, 1980, the Bulldogs brought home a national championship for Dooley (who by that time was serving as both Athletic Director and head football coach) defeating Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl on January 1, 1981.During his splendid three-year tenure, Walker rushed for 5,259 yards and brought the Heisman Trophy back to the hedges, as the Bulldogs won 33 games against 3 losses. “Nobody had his speed,” says Dooley. “He was a great combination of speed, strength, and mental toughness.”Dooley continued success in the post-Walker era, leading the Dawgs to six straight bowl games and two straight 9-3 seasons to close out his career. In 1988, Dooley retired from football and concentrated on his duties as A.D. The Dooley era is “Marked” by the signing off of new sports programs at Georgia and the hire of current head coach Mark Richt from Florida State.Now at Kennesaw State, Dooley insists that his role has been minor (that more credit should be given to Owls A.D. Vaughn Williams and Bohannon) but that his experience hasn’t lacked in fun. “I’m seeing football from a different perspective—from the ground up,” Dooley says. “We recently had our first scrimmage, and let me tell you—it was a spectacle! Thousands of folks were there, and they crowned a Homecoming Queen. I’m excited about all the things that are taking place here, and its part of a beautiful ride for me.” Shhh-shhh. The former coach keeps busy with gardening (“which is my golf”) and history. “Gardening is good for the mind, good for the body, good for the soul,” he says. Dooley also serves as the Vice-Chair of the Georgia Historical Trust and is on the board of the Georgia Civil War Trust—an organization whose mission is to preserve battlefield land (ironically, Dooley consults a football program near a major Civil War battle—The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain). He’s a reader, swallowing up all three volumes of the Atkinson trilogy on the liberation of Europe during WWII, and has written an article that was recently published in Georgia Historical Quarterly on the 1942 Georgia Pre-Flight team that boasted a young assistant coach named Paul Bryant.You can bet that Dooley won’t have anything to do with the Xs and Os of the Kennesaw team—he’ll leave that up to Bohannon. He’ll even let the new coach select who speaks to his players after games. And you can bet that it won’t be Eddy Arnold.Besides the fact that he’s dead, they’ve never heard of him either.78For more stories like these, link up with us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/78mag!