Dooley family backs Derek in Tennessee debut

By Steve Hummer

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

KNOXVILLE — There hardly could be a louder statement of a mother’s love than that made by Barbara Dooley and her amazing Technicolor Tennessee Dreamcoat on Saturday.

Connect the sand dollar-sized white polka dots on her bright orange jacket, and you have the outline of a woman who would commit any kind of crime against fashion for her children.

Accessorizing with a purse of equal or greater orange, the grande dame of Georgia football arrived at Saturday’s Tennessee vs. Tennessee-Martin game looking like the head of the Volunteers Fan Club spirit committee.

She is the wife of Georgia’s iconic coach, Vince. But moreso these days, she is the mother of Tennessee’s new coach, Derek, who made his debut Saturday night with an uneventful victory over the overmatched Skyhawks from the western end of Tennessee.

Where her son is concerned, there is no middle ground.

“I will always be a Georgia gal. Georgia is my home. The University of Georgia, though I didn’t graduate from there, is my university. But when it comes to football, I’m pulling for my baby,” Barbara said.

In tow was Vince, who uncomfortably tried to recede into the background when, during the pregame Vol Walk, fans tried to hit him up for pictures and autographs. This is a strange situation for a former Georgia coach/athletic director associated with that program’s best days. How can he balance his deep connection with Georgia with the parental prerogative to root on a son coaching one of the Bulldogs biggest rivals?

So discomforting is all of this, that when Tennessee comes to Athens to play Oct. 9, Vince plans to watch it from his newly remodeled Athens home rather than face all those wondering stares at Sanford Stadium.

As for his own fashion statement when venturing into General Neyland’s backyard:

“I’m emphasizing the white,” he said. As in a plain white shirt, with dark slacks, not a speck of orange.

He imposed but one strong request upon his gregarious wife before they began their drive from Athens early Saturday morning.

“I cannot put on [any Tennessee-themed wear] until I cross the state line. My husband will not look at me in orange in Georgia,” Barbara joked.

Such was one of the charming little asides that frame an otherwise humorless story about a young coach and a stability starved program.

The family tree

The rise of Vince Dooley’s second son into the family business has been head-spinning. Fifteen years ago, he was practicing law in Atlanta. And now, here he is, just 42, with three year’s head coaching experience logged at Louisiana Tech, heading one of the eminent SEC programs.

These Dooleys do not believe in long apprenticeships. Vince was a little known and widely suspect 32-year-old former Auburn assistant when he began his quarter-century reign at Georgia.

As many challenges as Vince faced gaining credibility and building an eventual national champion, he deems his son’s tests at Tennessee to be “five to 10 times greater than I had.”

Derek is the Vols’ third coach in three years, replacing the one-and-done comic stylings of Lane Kiffin. The instability has eaten into Tennessee’s talent reserve, as players transferred and recruits shied away. Just like its coach, the team is largely young and untried.

And the new coach’s grace period has been anything but tranquil.

Vince remembered that, during his first preseason at Georgia, his vacation consisted of a weekend in Cashiers, N.C. Derek, too, has found little time for rest. He was trying to milk a few extra days from an annual Fourth of July family retreat to Lake Burton when the news broke that several of his players were involved in a bar fight that left an off-duty cop hospitalized. He was back in Knoxville before the ink on the headlines dried. He subsequently dismissed one player and handed out a token suspension to two others.

“That’s part of the job,” Derek said earlier this week. “My father always said it’s a series of crises. You better be prepared for one every day, so when it happens you just deal with it.

“It’s not something you want, certainly not something your family wants, but I’ve been there. I remember as a child being on trips and there’s a call. When that comes, it’s not going to be good.”

In true Dooley fashion, Derek spent the week before his first game building up the visitor. Sure, he and his older brother, Daniel, would howl when, as boys, they attended some Bulldogs press conference where their father built every opponent into a conquering Mongol horde.

That which Derek Dooley once mocked has now become a part of his routine. And, as he gets older, his dad continues to get smarter.

But in truth, one afternoon spent playing a lesser opponent such as Tennessee-Martin is hardly an accurate measure of what Dooley’s Vols face. The following two weekends consist of home dates against No. 11 Oregon and No. 4 Florida. By the time October is done, Tennessee will have faced five of the preseason top 25 teams, including top-ranked Alabama.

That makes one fan particularly anxious.

Balancing act for mom

In anticipation of a difficult season, the coach’s mother, a woman who has stared down cancer, said, “I tell you this is harder than anything I’ve ever done in my life.

“It was tough watching Vince. I used to get physically sick before Georgia games. This is really tearing me up. I know what he’s got to go through. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. But he’s on a much higher scale than we were when we first started out. Back in the ’60s, football was king and all that, but it wasn’t the big business that it is today.”

The Dooleys are learning as they go how to be the parents of a big-time college coach. Balancing their schedules between Tennessee and Georgia games will be tricky. Generally, Vince plans to attend most of the Bulldogs home games and travel to Knoxville when Georgia is on the road. Barbara — who by the way hopes to find a new pair of bright orange shoes to go with her outfit before next week’s game against Oregon — hopes to be at every Tennessee home game this season.

Before long, they will know all the best places to buy fireworks.

But while in the company of his son’s team, Vince may not avail himself of every Tennessee tradition. As the Vols rolled it up on poor UT-Martin on Saturday, “Rocky Top” sounded continually in the stands. There was no visual evidence of the former Georgia coach singing along.

There may be fewer opportunities to break out that little ditty in weeks to come. The newest Coach Dooley created a phrase for those game days that try men’s souls. No one can accurately gauge where he and his team stand, he said, “until it gets thick.”

And it is about to get so thick around here that two generations of Dooleys, linked hand-to-hand, will be hard pressed to get their arms around this season.