Vince Dooley: ‘Coaching is about surviving a series of crises’

Once in a while, you have to break your own rules. In this case, blame Vince Dooley.

The legendary football coach, who led UGA to one national championship and six SEC titles, talked about a wide range of issues during a two-hour interview last week. Instead of five Q&As, there are 10.

Dooley, 81, discusses his upbringing, what he learned in the Marines and from coaching icons Bear Bryant and Bobby Dodd. He also talks about his 40 years as either head football coach or athletic director at UGA, including high-profile controversies involving academic fraud allegations in the 1980s and his replacement as athletic director in 2004.

Dooley has remained active, speaking and consulting, including helping Kennesaw State University launch a football program in 2015. Oh, and he jumped out of a plane three months ago.

Q: What did you learn from your parents?

A: Neither one of my parents had a formal education. Neither finished grammar school. But as I look back on it, they gave me some very basic values that were more important than a formal education.

I have retained those values:

Q: You learned a leadership lesson from a nun. Please discuss.

A: When I was growing up in Mobile, Ala., I had the benefit of a good Catholic education. They were strong on discipline.

Early on, I found myself being put into leadership positions. One day, I got in trouble. When I was in grammar school, the boys during recess would run across the street to a yard to play. But one day the gate, which was normally open, was closed.

I said, “men, over the top.” We started climbing but the gate collapsed and everyone fell.

When they found out I had instigated this, I remember the nun talking to me and asking why I had done that.

I told her I wanted to be a leader.

She told me, “there are positive leaders and negative leaders, and you became a negative leader.”

It was a good early lesson. If you’re going to lead, lead in a positive way.

Q: You went on to be a leader as a quarterback in high school and at Auburn, where you were in the Navy ROTC. You then joined the U.S. Marines as a second lieutenant. What did you learn?

A: I learned the importance of depending on other people in key positions. I learned that it was absolutely necessary to figure out how to best utilize good people.

It’s a lesson that stayed with me. As an administrator, you want to hire good people and then let them flap their wings. When things go right, you praise them and let them know how much you appreciate them.

When things go wrong, you stand up and take the responsibility publicly. If you have problems, you solve them internally, quietly. But the leader has to stand up publicly and say, “it’s my fault and I’ll correct it.”

Q: After the Marines, you became an assistant football coach at Auburn. You scouted the teams of two coaching giants — Alabama’s Bear Bryant and Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd. Please discuss.

A: I was head scout so I always kept those two teams for myself. It was a learning experience to study them on the field and off the field. You want to learn from the best.

It’s a classic example that there’s no set way to do something. They did it within their own personalities.

Bear Bryant was a hard driver, really a hard driver. Tough practices. But he always knew when to back off.

Coach Dodd had a different way, with not as hard practices. He was a great motivator, but not as demanding as Bryant.

Both of them had the ability to get the most of their players in a different way.

Q: How did you build a winning program at UGA?

A: I knew the biggest early decisions I had to make was to hire good people with good character. As a head coach at 31, I was much younger than most of my staff. I had an early ability of appreciating the importance of my staff.

You create a unity of purpose. It’s a team. We had to be unified as a staff if we were going to be unified as a team. We had mutual respect.

Fortunately, we had a bunch of hungry, scrappy players that needed direction. We had early success. You gain credibility in coaching by winning. That allows you to recruit well. But it was a challenge to maximize the ability of these players to play together.

You’ve got to have a program with consistency. What you don’t want is deep variations (in winning from one season to another). You want to make your down cycle go just slightly down, so that the climb back up isn’t so dramatic.

Q: How did you deal with crises?

A: Coaching is about surviving a series of crises. This is a highly visible profession you're in. You need to be able to survive them on and off the field.

If it’s a crisis on the field, you try to analyze what we are doing wrong and how do we get better. That comes with sitting down with the staff and setting a course of correction.

It can be a crisis off the field, like the Jan Kemp episode where (the UGA teacher) made accusations of academic fraud — passing players that should not have passed. There were mistakes that were made. The president of the university and other officials left. We were investigated by the attorney general’s office, by the NCAA, by a faculty committee and by the media.

Every day something came up. Instead of trying to answer everything that was thrown at us, why not take the opportunity to make this program better because of it?

When something goes wrong, you’ve got to first look at yourself. Where am I falling short? When I can correct that, then I can start correcting everybody else.

Q: You explored running for the U.S. Senate and for governor of Georgia in the late 1980s. Why didn’t you run?

A: I always was fascinated by politics. When you make that decision (to run), you better be totally committed mentally and spiritually.

In the final analysis, while I wanted to do it in my head, I never wanted to do it in my heart. I never did have the feeling in my gut.

Q: What was your toughest decision as athletic director?

A: The success of an athletic director, in the minds of most people, depends on how well the football program is doing. We won 23 national championships in various sports while I was athletic director, but it wouldn't make any difference if the football program was not doing well.

The toughest decision I had to make as an athletic director was to make a change. Ray Goff is a guy that I recruited as a player, hired as an assistant coach and supported as coach. I knew his family. But I had to decide that we needed to make a change.

It was tough on me and even tougher on him because he lost his job. But if you’re going to sit in this position, you need to do what, in your heart, is the best thing for the program. If not, you need to get out of that position.

Q: As president of the university, Michael Adams decided to replace you as athletic director, a move that erupted into a major controversy. Please discuss.

A: President Adams decided to make a change, which is certainly his prerogative. I felt like it wasn't a good time to make a change. We just started a capital campaign and I wanted to finish that up. I wanted to stay on a few more years, but he didn't want me to.

I didn’t agree with him on how he handled my situation and still don’t. I can understand him wanting to bring in his own person. But, on the other hand, I have been around here a long time, fairly well-respected on both sides of the ball, as a coach and as an administrator.

He could have done a better job finding the best way to be fair and do what’s right, and also make a change. But I have always said that it was his decision.

Q: Not many people in their 80s decide to skydive. Why did you do it?

A: One of my grandsons, Matthew, has cerebral palsy. He's part of organization that raises money for kids with disabilities. One way to do that is to through jumping out of airplanes. It's a tandem jump with an experienced person.

Three of us did it — Matthew, his father Daniel and me. But I told them, “do not ask me to jump again, because I’m not going to do until I’m 90.”