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Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2008 > December > 12
Friday, December 12, 2008
Dooley days of coaching long gone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Vince Dooley was the football coach at Georgia for 25 years. They just put a statue of the guy on campus. Anyway, if he were starting his career today, and if his Bulldog teams were to perform exactly as they did during that stretch, he’d last maybe half as long, probably less than that.
I’d give him four years.
Tops.
“Well, I had a couple of crises to deal with,” said Dooley, laughing, while recalling his College Football Hall of Fame coaching stint at Georgia that ended after the 1988 season.
Before we continue, let’s jump to the present, where another college football coach likely got whacked while you were reading this. From Washington to Syracuse, and from Eastern Michigan to Miami (Ohio), we’ve already had 17 coaching resignations, firings or both at the Division 1-A level, and consider this: The bowl season hasn’t even begun.
It’s out of control. It only will get worse, too, especially if you wish to coach among the big boys some day.
“I think most people would say there is less patience [regarding the careers of college football coaches] in this day and time,” said Dooley, who also was a Georgia athletics director. “Maybe it’s salaries. Maybe it’s the generation — the so-called Now Generation, where there is less and less tolerance. Maybe it’s a new wave of athletics directors, where most of them have not coached. Maybe it’s a combination of all of those things.”
Maybe Dooley benefited as a pre-Baby Boomer. The same goes for the likes of Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno, still active as head coaches with Florida State (33 seasons) and Penn State (43 seasons), respectively. Those from Generation X and beyond are in coaching purgatory. Which brings us back to all of those times when Dooley would have been yesterday’s news in Athens. You know, if the climate around college football coaches back then resembled that of now.
He once had his likeness hung in effigy at Sanford Stadium — after just his fourth season with the Bulldogs, and after they’d captured the SEC and the Cotton Bowl the year before. Courtesy of an average of seven victories for three straight years through 1974, there were “Dump Dooley” stickers everywhere.
There also was that Jan Kemp scandal during the 1980s that featured Georgia football players ignoring the “student” part of a student-athlete in embarrassing ways.
Dooley survived. As for what would happen to a coach with such a resume today, he said, “There is no allowance for a bad season, or even for a bad game.”
For verification, you have the SEC of the last few weeks. Tommy Tuberville was forced out of Auburn despite an 85-40 record after 10 seasons. His Tigers regularly whipped Top 10 foes, but among other things, they lost the Iron Bowl this year to dreaded Alabama. It didn’t matter that they had won the previous six.
Phillip Fulmer grabbed a national title, two conference championships and seven divisional titles in 17 years at Tennessee. He was fired — a season after reaching the SEC championship game.
Then there was Sylvester Croom, who resigned at Mississippi State after a mighty shove from his bosses. Never mind that he inherited a probation-filled program that sits in the middle of nowhere (as in how can you bring talent to Starkville?). He left after five years despite taking his 2007 team to eight victories, including ones over Alabama, Auburn and rival Ole Miss.
Guess Tuberville, Fulmer, Croom and the rest were born at the wrong time. Or Dooley was born at the right time.
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