I appreciate this reply. When I was seeing all the praise for Dooley, I was thinking "What?!?" I'm practically a contemporary of his and watched his career close up. At the time, we regarded Dooley as being outstanding for two things - 1) acquiring Walker, and 2) avoiding Coach Bryant. We'd look over there and think "Yeah, but what if..." So strange that they idealize Dooley and diss Richt, who had a better record. All that said, I guess it's poetic justice that Auburn would have a field named after a UGA guy (Dye), and UGA would have a field named after an Auburn guy (Dooley)...
What's hilarious is that I have a cousin on my Mom's side who was raised in Georgia so naturally gravitated towards the Dawgs.
When they were full of themselves in the early 80s, they would rip on Coach Bryant and absolutely insist he ran the SEC and was "afraid" of playing Georgia and "good teams" and ran up huge win totals against "cupcakes" like Florida State when it was a girl's school.
Of course it was comical once I could check things out via the web.......Georgia played FSU more than Bryant did. In fact, Georgia played them FOUR times between 61 and 65
and LOST ALL FOUR TIMES!!!!
Dooley was coaching those last two.
I realize I don't bring your firsthand experience to the table, but I never thought of Dooley in the same solar system as Bryant. I have this thing with hard data (no doubt owing to my lab degree).
Data doesn't lie. People remember things nostalgically or differently than reality, but the data doesn't lie. That doesn't mean the data isn't subject to statistical alteration IF there's a reason to do so
(e.g. stadium advantages that inflate or deflate certain baseball stats is a good example).
Dooley's record shows him to be a GOOD coach.
And let me remind everyone of something regarding Dooley. I noted in earlier posts about his failure to post consecutive 9-win seasons until when?
1980-83
And what happened in 1981?
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While coordinator of Georgia’s remedial English program, Dr. Kemp was among several faculty members who had complained that
officials at Georgia intervened in the fall of 1981 to enable nine football players to pass a remedial English course in which they had received failing grades. The athletes remained eligible to play for Georgia against Pittsburgh in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day 1982.
The university’s president, Dr. Fred C. Davison, announced his resignation in March 1986.
The board of regents of the University System of Georgia issued a report in April implicating Dr. Davison and the Georgia athletic department, headed by Vince Dooley, who was also the football coach, in a pattern of academic abuse in the admission and advancement of student-athletes over the previous four years. Both Dr. Davison and Mr. Dooley denied improper conduct, but Georgia tightened academic standards for its athletes.
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Now.....I'm not gonna hack on Dooley with some boast of self-righteous purity, but it does strike me as not-so-coincidental that his highest levels of success coincide with the sudden pressure on professors to keep players eligible.
Vince Dooley was a GOOD coach. He also was one of the Southern breed of coaches that saw his team through to full integration, and those guys had it rough from the outside as well as the inside.
But he wasn't "he'd be Bear Bryant if he bought players like Bryant did" good, either. (Nor am I conceding beyond what Coach Bryant admitted to doing at Texas A/M).