Barrett Sallee asks Vince Dooley for his thoughts on the topic, and I’ll be damned if Dooley doesn’t say he would prefer that Herschel Walker hadn’t played in 1980.
“In an ideal world, I would like to see freshmen ineligible,” Dooley, who doubled as Georgia’s athletics director from 1979-2004, told Bleacher Report. “Particularly in basketball. I’d have to make economic sense in football, which is the biggest question. You’d have to add a large number of scholarships. In basketball, you might have to add a couple of scholarships, but not as many. So it wouldn’t be as big of a financial strain as it would in football.”
This, despite acknowledging that a few true freshman every year are capable of playing college ball and that Herschel was the best player on the team as a freshman.
I’m just curious how many of you agree with him.
Get The Picture 
Vince Dooley isn’t in the Hall of Fame with Carnie Norris at tailback in 1980. We don’t win on a hot night in ObKnoxville with the Goal Line Stalker ineligible as a freshman back in Athens working on an English 101 paper.
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You don’t beat Notre Dame, either.
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or Florida, probably. Or Auburn.
the good news is we probably would have drilled Tech that year even with the Senator at RB.
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My point was that we wouldn’t have won the SEC because we would have lost that night to UT. We still should have lost anyway with a miracle fumble on the 1 yard line late. We definitely would not have played ND in a bowl game of any kind that year without him.
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Yeah but, he might have stayed through 4 yrs.
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Amen, Brother. And we would not have beaten South Carolina, either. Since we would not have been in the Sugar Bowl without Walker it is silly to say we would not have won that game without him, but, just look at that game with him. We had 124 yards of total offense. For the entire game. 124 yards. Herschel had 150 rushing. The rest of the team had -26 yards. Glad he played through the injury and glad he wasn’t sitting in the stands with the other freshmen.
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Wouldn’t have beat Tech in ’78 without a freshman QB coming in to save the day, either. And there were probably a couple of freshman kickers that saved a game or two over the years.
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In my father’s world, I think freshmen should have been ineligible. But around Herschel’s time, I don’t think it made as much sense. And it is just unworkable now. The genie is out of the bottle.
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I’m not quite sure what the point is given that so many of these guys are ready to make an impact on Day 1.
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It depends on the mission of the university.
Education or profit?
Ironically, young men were probably better prepared for being a freshman away from home for the first time, when the ineligible rule existed, than they are now, when it no longer exists.
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Dooley doesn’t even mention education.
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because sports has never been at academics at schools.
The first thought he had was “Do I have to spend more on scholarships?”
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I’ve always been lukewarm to Dooley and disagree with him on this. You make a good observation that he doesn’t mention academics. Also, I think academics for many coaches simply means stay eligible. It’s a means to an end. That end is having your best players suited up for the big game. Until Kemp Vince and Fred did a good job at “academics” in regards to the football team.
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If I’m getting paid $2-3MM/yr to win, I wonder how much I care about academics?
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Nothing but respect for Coach Dooley, but disagree on this one. But folks may not agree with my view, either. Let freedom ring, man. If they can play as a college freshman, let ’em. If they can play pro coming out of high school, or after one year in college, let ’em. Naturally, I’d rather keep our best players at UGA as long as possible. But why should college football players be bottled up for 3 years so their universities, the NCAA and ESPN can make bank? If my kid accepts an engineering scholarship but gets a six figure offer from IBM after year one, he can take that offer. If my kid accepts a football scholarship and gets the same offer from the NFL, he can’t. Tain’t right.
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Agree wholeheartedly. Why 18 year olds can’t enter the NBA or the NFL is a question the NBA and NFL answer. Those are there rules.
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This is it exactly. Great post.
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One additional point I poorly made above, your kid can’t get an NFL offer as a freshman because the NFL rules do not allow it. He can accept an NFL offer the moment the NFL allows its teams to make one.
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Not if the job requires a college education. Businesses put the same education stipulations on employees as the NFL/NBA.
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BTW. They also use graduate students to make money for the university with research and give them free education.
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I understand it’s rare for a major business to hire a non-college graduate at a high salary. But my point is they could do so if they chose to do so. IBM and its competitors do not have a formal arrangement between themselves to eschew hiring the next whiz kid who, say, is on the verge of inventing a data processing implant for the human brain. In fact, if they heard about such a kid, they’d probably be lining up to make offers.
On the other hand, if the Atlanta Falcons want to hire that very rare football player who’s ready for the next level after, say, rushing for over 1500 yards his freshman year, they can’t do that without breaching the perfectly legal restraint of trade agreement with their NFL cohorts.
I must also note here that my hypothetical tech whiz kid could sell his soon to be even more valuable autograph all day long while he’s entertaining offers from Big Blue and others without risking his scholarship. He could even start his own engineering firm with funding from UGA alums without penalty. But if he’s the same tech whiz kid who happens to be attending school on an athletic scholarship, his eligibility and scholly are at risk.
Believe me, I’m no free market extremist. But I think the various mechanisms in place uniquely restricting and restraining the economic freedoms of young, talented football players and other athletes are grossly unfair, particularly when so many others get rich off of their talents. Changing it would probably ruin my favorite spectator sport, but they’re ruining it anyway, so may as well do it in a relatively fair manner.
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+1
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It only makes sense as a means to de-professionalize college sports. Are there shorter lines between point A (where we are) and point B (where we ought to be)? No doubt. But if this effort is designed to begin to put an end to the mutual exploitation that characterizes college sports today and moves us to an era of bringing college sports back to its original purpose: not cash, but human improvement through academic and physical rigor and some school pride, I’m open to any reasonable means to achieving those ends.
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You think they’ll renegotiate those TV contracts if freshmen CFB and CBB players are made ineligible? And charge us less for tickets?
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I think that slavery should have ended even in the face of higher comodities prices and lower profit margins. It’s an extreme example but the basic principle remains: are there things more valuable than money? I think so. Do college presidents and athletic directors agree? Probably not. I do agree that freshman ineligibility could reduce the value of the product. There are risks. I tend to think though that fans care about their teams and competitive balance. I think good kids and students can play good football. I think that if some schools admit athletic freaks who can’t read others will follow in order to win. I think there is a way out. UK’s one and dones and cam newtons dad treating his son like the prize bull at the auction turned me hard against the current path. I want to see a new direction. Are they just making judo moves designed to keep lining their own pockets and continue to screw the labor? Could be. I certainly get the cynicism. But promoting the current path leading to semi pro college sports is not palatable to me. Share the wealth doesn’t land where we need to be even if its more equitable. However I will agree with you in this point: if it really is all about the cash I do hope they lose. I’d rather see players get a salary than the continued exploitation. I have a preference, not founded upon naivety, that we can reform college sports. Of course someone in charge has to share that motive. Is that the driver here? No idea. I do think though that achieving a balance where more teams can compete at the highest levels can be achieved through academic standard reform. That may well result in a better more valuable product in the end. The truth is that there are very few programs that can compete with bama and apparently none can compete with uk BB. Can you take away that advantage and still have a great product? I think so. Is that what the people in charge think? Don’t know, but they ought to be.
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Simple question for you: how does freshman ineligibility promote academics?
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I’ve addressed this before. There is no direct correlation, period. None. There are kids who are smart AND can play immediately. There are also a lot of kids who will say: why sit at a college I don’t want to be in when I’ll be in the draft next spring?
So if it drives away the “one and dones” and the “don’t want to be theres” and the “not qualified to be theres” because they have to sit, there is less motive to lower the bar and there is less motivation to keep the bar low.
Your question is similar to saying: why have a coat and tie dress code at a fine dining restaurant? It doesn’t make anyone take a shower before they show up. People without coats and ties can still look nice and behave themselves. All very true. However, it does cause the audience to self-select in a manner desirable for both the public and the proprietors of the establishment.
If you don’t want rubes to show up at Chez fru fru, have a dress code. If you don’t want morons in college sports tell them that they have to sit for a year. Will you still get a few rubes and morons? Sure. Have you accomplished something in the way of narrowing the field? Of course you have albeit not perfectly, completely or in the most direct way. Chez fru fru could say: you want a reservation, send me your financials, a recent photo and three references and get a tighter control, but its a little aggressive and off putting. Its better for the customer to decide he’d rather be doing something else isn’t it?
Now again it may be that the college presidents and AD’s still want the morons and just don’t want to share and yada yada and yes they suck and are greedy and unfair and have poor judgment and on and on and on. If you are right and its just to keep ALL the money, I’m with you, I hope that they lose. I’m a cynical optimist at heart. Hope is a good thing even if the dream is never realized.
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Why does the first group have to suffer for the sins of the latter?
You’ve got new rules coming into play on high school prep and academics that haven’t even been tested yet. You’ve also got the ability to redshirt freshmen. Am I missing something here as to why the overkill you suggest is really necessary?
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I’d argue that a kid who wants to be a college graduate and finds himself with a free ride to get one won’t be feeling any suffering at all. The suffering begins at the point of exploitation. When you take kids who can play but can’t read and give them a college scholly in order to make money off of them and then say you aren’t sharing any of it, that’s wrong. Telling a student who is qualified to be in your school, “hey, how’d you like to go to school for free AND be a sport’s star?” I’m having a hard time seeing any suffering. Sharing the wealth only becomes an issue for me when you don’t give a rat’s ass about the mission of the school. If everybody, athlete and administrator alike, prioritizes the academic mission even TO THE DETRIMENT of athletics, then we are getting somewhere and there is no exploitation or suffering. When UK hears a kid say, “uh, I want one semester then I’ll skip school to play BB and then drop out after the tourney for the draft” and UK says “you are our type of student athlete” then fuck ’em!!!! Right in the ear!!!
Is it “overkill” to go to freshmen ineligibility prior to seeing where new standards take us? I don’t know. Will Auburn give a shit? Will they still admit and maintain any moron who can play? I’d have to know something about those standards I guess. This is what I know: Caleb King, Paul Oliver, and Austin Long aren’t getting kicked out of Auburn for lack of academic progress. Are we perfect? No. Are we better than Auburn and Bama? You damn right we are.
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Agree wholeheartedly with your goals but the freshman ineligibility rule would do no more to accomplish that aim than if we rounded up all witches to burn at the stake.
Let’s ignore window dressing and think up reforms that will accomplish your goal.
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We’re better than that…we throw witches in the river
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When the govt quits protecting NFL / NBA monopolies, you would probably see smaller competing leagues with no entry restrictions pop up, or the threat of those leagues would force the changes most of us want to see. That is the #1 problem. No competition means no change
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The government isn’t protecting those monopolies. The collective bargaining agreements protect those monopolies with their labor rules (ie, when is an athlete eligible for their drafts).
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Funny he mentioned basketball since his neglect and overt disdain of the program is a big reason why we aren’t a more established power.
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Let ‘EM play, they can serve in the military in time of war – so let them play.
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I’ve heard this before, but don’t know specifics. What’s the story with his neglect?
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That you for asking. It gives me opportunity to rant.
Just a couple of examples. We had one of the best coaches in basketball, Tubby Smith. He had the best back to back seasons in our history. Smith was great with the fans and ran the program exactly the way UGA wanted. The fans nicknamed Steg “the tub.” Then Pitino left Kentucky and Kentucky offered Smith. Dooley, who was AD and owed a duty to his employer, made no effort to keep him. In fact, he told Smith he should take the Kentucky job. Would Smith have stayed? Chances are he would still have left but Dooley owed it to his employer to at least try to talk Smith into staying, reminding him that if he stayed at UGA we would wind up naming the gym after him, but at UK it would always be, “Rupp Arena.” He could have gone to the athletic board and asked to authorize a raise to what UK was paying but Dooley did nothing to keep Smith.
Dooley compounded the problem by the lazy assed hire of Jirsa. He made no real search and instead made that silly and embarrassing comment about the little kid’s letter asking to make Coach Ron Coach a Tubby.
He was just as guilty as Adams in using the 2003 basketball team as a pawn in the power struggle with Adams and the 2003 press conference and taking the team out of the tournaments shit set Georgia basketball back for a decade.
He put little effort as AD in assisting with promoting UGA basketball. Durham had to pay for promotional billboards out of his own pocket.
Ironically, at a point in his playing career Dooley was considered a basketball player who also played football, not the other way around.
I have a ton of respect for other things Dooley did as a coach and AD and he deserves to be in the college football hall of fame, but as a basketball first Georgia fan I cannot forgive the neglect towards my favorite sport.
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Vince is dead wrong on this one.
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I’ll say this much: IF we still lived in Vince Dooley’s formative years and IF we lived in a Pollyanna world where the mission of college athletics was actually what they say it is, I would agree that freshmen should be ineligible.
But since neither of those conditions exists, the notion that freshmen should be ineligible makes no sense to me at all.
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Herschel wasn’t the best player on the team as a freshman. He was the best player in the country as a freshman.
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+34
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As a Dawg, I respect Dooley immensely. But I part ways from him on this. He’s just wrong.
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Hell, Herschel “thought Carnie Norris and Donnie McMickens was doing’ a real fine job …”
I agree will y’all that was a different day, and I’m damn glad he played. I was in the stands at Neyland Stadium that night and at the Superdome on January 1.
But, I have to say I really miss those old JV games. Especially the Georgia-Georgia Tech JV game on Thanksgiving Day. Strong Legs Run so that Weak Legs May Walk. Good times with my father … taught me to hate Tech at an early age. Carrying on the family tradition with my daughters!
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Aristotle, I envy you being in Neyland and the Dome in 1980, but if you loved those JV games, at least the ones I went to in my student days in the early 1970s, you were one of the hundreds in the stands enjoying them, except for the Tech games.
For the most part the folks in the stands for those games could all split a bottle of Jack.
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I grew up worshiping at the Vince Dooley altar and I’ll never forget the physical reaction I had one day when I was in Athens and I realized I was standing right next to him.
But when he flirted with Auburn he became a real human with faults….and he’s been on a constant down hill slide since- sometimes in a freefall. Now I think he embarrasses himself every time he opens his mouth.
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If freshman were ineligible but the timeline for entry to the pro game stayed the same…wouldn’t it be a total loss for the college game? I am thinking it would be the Knowshon scenario everywhere. instead of 3 years out of a star player you get 2–but pay the scholly for 3. That doesn’t make sense to me.
The notion that is academics is laughable. They don’t give a shit about that.
Mostly, I don’t want basketball, which is utter garbage to me (save the movie Hoosiers) to impact football in any way.
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Lamont, while we are 180 degrees apart on hoops we are 100% together on the point that the colleges would be losing 1/3 of their investment in a football player and 100% of their investment in a top notched basketball player.
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I stopped agreeing with Dooley when he hired Ray Goff.
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If only that were true…. Of course its not. Dooley recommended Erk Russell to the Chuck Knapp-led committee. CPJ was in line to be OC BTW. Chuck didn’t want to be the second most powerful person on campus to begin his tenure and offered Erk the job in way that he wouldn’t take it and he didn’t. Dooley may have kept Ray a year too long, but one could argue that had Robert Edwards stayed healthy in 1995, that Ray would have been the coach for several more seasons.
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Or if Mike Bobo had stayed healthy …
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I wouldn’t go with “or” though it might have helped. Edwards was unstoppable before the injury. Bobo probably doesn’t get hurt at Ole Miss with Robert because we wouldn’t have been playing “chuck-n-duck.” We were still a pretty average team without Robert no matter who was playing QB.
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Good point but that offense was cooking with the 2 of them together
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I was actually at the press conference when the hire was announced. I have a photo some where of Dooley’s expression while Ray was talking. He didn’t look pleased.
That whole thing was so badly botched …
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Lord have mercy, your words, “That whole thing was so badly botched…” are tied for first for the “Most accurate words ever spoken” award.
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that’s precisely how I’ve heard the story. Erk didn’t get the job for almost the same reason that Dooley got shown the door as AD. A new administration who is concerned that if they hire Erk or keep Dooley that they(Knapp/Adams) would not be the most respected/powerful man on campus In a casual conversation with Rusty Russell(Erk’s son) on Amelia Island he said that the offer was intentionally and obviously make to Coach Russell in such a manner as to assure he wouldn’t accept it.
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Knapp was fine with Dooley as AD.
Erk was told in a very ham-handed way that he would have to apply for the job and be considered for it just like any other candidate.
The story here isn’t one of malice as it is of incompetence. And that’s Dooley’s fault for not having anyone prepared to deal with the consequences of his abrupt departure from both jobs.
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Good point about Dooley. He got political ambitions and forgot to mind his day job.
I played in a fundraising golf tournament in a foursome with Charlie Trippi a lot of years ago and he joked about how Dooley lost the election bug when he realized he would have to spend some of his own money.
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I differ in who to blame .Knapp was new to the head of UGA and bringing in a legend with superior respect among the alumni (i.e. Russell) would have ,in his mind, undermined is authority. The slight to Erk was deemed intentional by the Russell family. You don’t tell him he has to apply …..you just tell him the job is yours if you want it. Ego/Pride caused Knapp to not invite a competitor to his authority onto campus in much the same way that Adams wanted his competitor off campus.
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Worrying about what Herschel coulda, woulda, shoulda is pointless. The only salient points in the interview with Vince are:
1: The need to increase the number of scholarships to be competitive if freshmen are not eligible, and;
2: The cost of that increased number of scholarships.
For those of us who have been concerned about not having a full 85-man roster, how does that work if you cut 20 freshman out of the herd each year and play the season at 65?
Ain’t gonna happen.
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Not if you think Dooley is FOS about the topic.
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Since what I think matters at least as much as what Vince thinks, I think worrying about Herschel is pointless. Now, if Vince had said Nick Chubb shoulda sat out last year, then…..
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I get the point that Dooley is in a excruciatingly awkward position to be making that argument. But the flipside is equally awkward: Saying you want to keep freshmen ineligible because Herschel borders on superstition. By just about any measure I can think of, Herschel is the quintessential outlier. The fact that we’re still penning hagiographies to him 35 years after his freshman season tells you how much of an outlier he is.
And I’m saying the preceding as an opponent of freshman ineligibility.
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I’m not making the point based on Herschel. I’m making it on all the other great skill position players who succeeded at Georgia after Herschel.
But I do find it remarkable that Dooley would essentially trade a national title for keeping Walker on the bench, without really giving much of a reason for doing so.
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Vince invented The Georgia Way?
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Joel Eaves.
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I think freshman ineligibility is being thrown up as a trial balloon in effort to change the dialogue about paying players. It will force the NBA and NFL to have serious discussion about developmental leagues.
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More the former than the latter, but I think that’s exactly what’s driving this discussion.
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So you think the freshman ineligibility conversation is just smoke?
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I think people like Jim Delany are trying to make Adam Silver push the NBA to change its eligibility rule. The rest of what this is about is, yes, as Delany indicated the other day, largely about optics.
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I don’t doubt you, but Delany misses the target. He needs to convince the NBA Players Association it needs to change the rule.
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I don’t think so. Not without approval from their unions and a profitable business model. Minor league baseball is a money loser for the parent MLB clubs. Minor league football and basketball won’t be any different. I wouldn’t go to minor league football game if you made it free and I wouldn’t watch it on TV either. I bet most sports fans feel exactly the same way.
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Lots of good points today. Of course 18 yo freshman should be able to play if they are good enough. I just missed out on the draft lottery when I was 18. I had several older friends drafted and sent to Vietnam when they were 18. One of them was killed in that shithole of a country when he was 18. So I don’t think playing a game at 18 is a very big deal. Dooley is getting a little old and dimwitted I believe.
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Couldn’t said it better, GD. If you’re old enough to die for your country, you’re damn sure old enough to play football for your college or to be hired to do so by a pro team.
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…but not drink a beer. Or smoke a bong. Or do a bump. Or drive without your seat belt on. Or ride a motorcycle without a helmet.
They say that freedom isn’t free. I say that whatever we have ain’t free and I’m pretty sure its not freedom.
You are free to do as you are told. You are free to do that until your heart’s content. Doing what you want to do? Well, “they” may have a problem with some of that.
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Ask Coach Dooley this same question on April 6, 1980, and I bet you would get a different answer.
But dat Scottish Rite game, tho.
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Barrett Salley didn’t interview Barbara Dooley, who, because we were 11-0 and preparing to play ND for the MNC when Vince renegotiated his contract to provide for a huge house paid for by the UGA AA with lifetime maintenance and upkeep paid for by the UGA AA, may have a different opinion on whether freshmen should have been able to play in 1980.
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