Vince Dooley was an all-time great football coach for Georgia Bulldogs - and so much more

This is a commentary by Mark Murphy, a longtime contributor to the Savannah Morning News.

I was at a friend’s house to watch the Alabama-LSU game a few years back when I overheard a comment that bordered on blasphemy:

“What’s the big deal about Vince Dooley? After all, he only won a single national championship.”

The comment was made by a transplanted Midwesterner who compared Coach Dooley to legendary Ohio State coach Woody Hayes, who was ultimately fired because he punched an opposing team’s player in the throat during a bowl game.

My response to that comment was both immediate and vociferous. I even wrote a column in this newspaper about it.

Dooley passed away on Oct. 28 at the age of 90. He died at his home in Athens, the same place he has lived since he first took over as Georgia’s head football coach in 1964, surrounded by his loving family.

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Dooley is an all-time coaching great

Vince’s football coaching exploits were sterling enough to land him a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame. Taking over a moribund Georgia program which had suffered three consecutive losing seasons, Dooley defeated Bear Bryant’s defending national champions on a trick play in the 1965 season opener and notched an upset win over Michigan in Ann Arbor that same year.

Dooley was ultimately Georgia’s winningest coach, with 201 victories and 20 bowl appearances in 25 seasons before he retired as head coach in 1988. He won the 1980 national championship and six SEC titles. His teams took absolute control of rivalries against Georgia Tech and Florida.

To this day, Dooley still has the fourth-highest total of SEC victories in conference history, after Bryant, Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier — and all of those other three coaches coached at more than one school in the conference. Vince spent his entire head coaching career at the University of Georgia.

Still, measuring Dooley’s life only via the metric of his football accomplishments does not do the man justice.

It was under Dooley’s guidance (and insistence) that Georgia integrated its football team in the 1960s. He won the 2008 Bud Selig Award, given by the Division I Athletic Directors, which recognizes persons in collegiate athletics who has been in the forefront of creating opportunities for minorities.

As athletic director, he transformed Georgia athletics, hiring coaches who made the Bulldog athletic program into one of the nation’s strongest. By the time he retired as AD n 2004, Georgia athletic teams had won an astonishing 23 national championships and 78 SEC titles. When Title IX propelled an increased emphasis on women’s collegiate athletics, Dooley built powerhouse women’s programs in basketball, gymnastics, equestrian, tennis and swimming, among others.

Under his direction, the athletic facilities at the University of Georgia underwent a tremendous upgrade — all of it funded exclusively by private donations. Vince did all of this with the same meticulous attention to detail that helped him win football games.

But that’s not all.

Much more than a football coach

Dooley, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, was also a person of exemplary character. A true Southern gentleman, he was always gregarious and engaging in person. A lifelong devotee to his family, his marriage to the former Barbara Meshad lasted 62 years, until his death, and produced four outstanding children.   

Vince had an undergraduate degree in business as well as a master’s degree in history and was a published Civil War scholar. In 2011, he was named a Trustee of the Georgia Historical Society in honor of his extensive historical research efforts.

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A master gardener, he has written books on horticulture and even has a species of hydrangea named for him. The extensive gardens around his home in Athens contain numerous statues of saints and other images representative of his strong Catholic faith.

Vincent J. Dooley was a man who was a family man first and foremost, a man of great faith and great character who never knew a stranger. He was a man of duty, serving his country volitionally and without question. He was a person for whom honor and integrity were paramount, a role model for thousands of young people whose lives he transformed both by leadership and by example.

Never one to be pigeonholed as a mere football coach, Vince’s expansive life was marked by a profound intellectual curiosity. He excelled at everything he did and did so with humility and grace.  It is not hyperbole to say that Vince Dooley is a Georgia legend. Indeed, we will likely not see another man like him in my lifetime.

So what’s the big deal about Vince Dooley?

Pretty much everything.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Vince Dooley died and left legacy in Georgia beyond Bulldogs football