Most inside the program are pleased to talk about Saturday’s occasion of the University of Georgia naming its football field after Vince Dooley. Until, that is, the conversation turns to the politics that it took for it to happen.
Ask about that, and folks suddenly get quiet or vague…
No, Dooley has always prided himself on remaining “above the fray.” Now his wife, Barbara, she’s been known to jump down in there sometimes.
She did when asked about the matter.
“It’s only because of Don Leebern; that’s just the bottom line,” Barbara Dooley said this week. “I had no idea that man had so damn much power. But he did.”
…
“Vince and Don were very good friends for many years, and Don turned on him,” Barbara Dooley said. “And, man, when he turned, he turned. Of course, when he turned, I turned on him. Vince didn’t, but I did.”
Time wounds all heels, eventually.
I only wish Leebern and Michael Adams would present themselves at the ceremony this Saturday. I haven’t enjoyed a good boo at Sanford Stadium since… well, since Adams presided over his last Homecoming game.
Get The Picture 
As CSNY once sang, “Should’ve been done long ago…”
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I just recently finished “Behind The Hedges”. It read like fiction.
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But it’s not fiction. That’s what is troubling.
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I read it last month. I was ignorant about the situation and thought that Dooley was just unwilling to cede any power and wanted to continue being the AD in perpetuity. The way that the issue was covered (or not covered) by the AJC was in light of the author’s reporting really glaring.
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I read about half of it last night. Does it get any better? This is really hard to believe.
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As Brian Robinson (ugh) said, the Dooleys stood up for Kemp early – they had their names as hosts on all the big fundraisers for him, and that’s why this is happening. I am actually surprised it wasn’t the first thing Kemp did after Stacey’s “holdout” ended….
The X field at Y stadium thing is dumb, and so it will always be Sanford Stadium to me….
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It will always be Sanford Stadium to me, but seeing Dooley Field painted on the playing surface like Coach K Court at Cameron is an appropriate tribute to the man who won more games than any other in program history.
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Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium…Stadium name not changing.
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Wondering if Babs will wear her orange dress for the occasion?
(I have not one issue with parents supporting their children, but flaunting that color in Sanford was just sticking a fork in Dawg fans’ faces….course she has been known to do that sometimes.)
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I miss Barbara. She could always be counted on to speak her mind. I can still hear her voice in my head doing those commercials for “Dooley’s other dog.”
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Ask Vince why Don and he had a fall out. I heard it wasn’t because anything Don did.
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Oh yes it was…
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And more than just one thing, for that matter…
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It was who Don did
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Exactly.
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They had the 1986 Georgia at South Carolina game on last night which featured Tim Brando interviewing Babs on the sideline about whether Vince really considered running for the Senate.
That was a scary backfield that season. James Jackson at QB and the rotation of Worley and Lars Tate at TB with Henderson and McClusky at FB. Talk about some FB’s that could actually run like TB’s.
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I did not start following until the early 90s, so forgive me for my ignorance but why were the Dooley teams after 1983 unable to really compete for the SEC? Was it Dye in Auburn or was it other reasons?
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Auburn and Florida was actually getting good as well except they got busted for cheating so they were on probation. Galen Hall had a nice team that was ranked #1 but not eligible to win anything. Dogs took care of that by stomping them. I think Muddy Waters just sacked Kerwin Bell again.
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We were sorta “busted” a little bit too…
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The answer for Fl and for Clem. was to hire Charlie Pell. You will win a bunch of games, then go on probation for 2 or 3 years. All you have to do after you fire the cheater is hire a fair coach , knowing the he will only be there for the probation period. Then hire a good coach and your team (UF &Clem) will have become winners. In fact they became national champions. That is the way Coach Pell made a living. Cheating and producing winning teams from losers.
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There was a dropoff in talent level in 1984 and 1985 after the great years of 1980-83. We had a bit of an influx of talent in the mid-’80s that improved the team in 1986 and especially 1987 and 1988, when we had a stable of veteran RBs and a number of talented defenders. In ’87 and ’88 we were good enough to be in de facto SEC championship games when we played Auburn at the end of the year, but in both of those games, Auburn was the better team and won decisively. Auburn had very solid teams in the late ’80s.
We lost a lot of talent off that 1988 team and were in a major rebuilding mode in Goff’s first two years in 1989 and 1990.
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I was too young to completely understand then, but from what I recall the early 90’s teams were essentially what Jimbo left for Willie at FSU. The cupboard was bare and recruiting at our top competitors had taken off to another level.
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Somewaht true, though the ’92 team was phenomenal and coulda been a contendah.
The painful truth is that UF got their act together at the exact moment we fumbled around and promoted a guy that wasn’t up to the task. The 93-96 teams had pieces but seemed small on defense (with Zeus being a notable exception) and this was the era that UT was in OL beast mode and UF could score on O on any single play.
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I started really following in 1991. I was a witness to the Spurrier dominance and the 1997 game in Jax was the first Cocktail Party I attended and is still the best.
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97 was when my father passed a few weeks before the season started. Beating UF that year was one of the few positive things that year.
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Oh, how painful ’92 was. Two losses by a total of five points. And the home loss to UT was, for me, the worst as we were the much better team. Multiple turnovers and Heath Shuler playing out of his mind. Plus we helped cement the Fulmer ouster of Majors in Knoxville.
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seems like all our DL suddenly weren’t coming to Athens, they were going to Auburn, or Clemson, or Tennessee. OL also struggled. We always had good RBs. QBs like Jamie Harris didn’t pan out, and then we had Todd Williams and Greg Talley (no offense, but not exactly a Stafford or Shockley). I am no analyst, but that’s how I seem to recall it.
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If Leeburn was against renaming the stadium the I stand with him on that.
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Anybody consider Dooley-Walker field? If it were not for Herschel, Dooley would have never won a NC. Truly a once in a lifetime athlete. Thank God I got to see him play three years, including against ND.
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Agreed Axe. Herschel is arguably the greatest college player in college football history, he was denied the Heisman in two of the years he was deserving of it, he is responsible for some of the greatest moments in the program history, a critical member of the last National Champion team at UGA, a fantastic ambassador for the program, and the main reason we can call ourselves RBU.
Oh yeah, let’s not forget this one from Dec 14 1982:
A crowd of a dozen people was standing by watching Ted Shanks, a university employee, struggling to open the smashed door of a car in which a 67-year-old woman was trapped. Smoke was coming from the car. Shanks couldn’t move the door and not one of the crowd offered to help.
And then Walker, clad in a sweatsuit for his Sunday morning run, burst out of the crowd, grabbed the door and with a single mighty wrench jerked it open.
‘It shocked me how it came loose,’ said Shanks. ‘He got ahold of something because he just ripped that thing loose. I had pulled on it before and couldn’t budge it. He just ripped the door open, glass shattered everywhere and then we got her out.’
At first, Shanks said, ‘I didn’t recognize him. It floored me when we stood up and I looked over her into his face.
‘It’s like you look up and there’s John Wayne helping you.’
‘I couldn’t believe how level-headed Herschel was during the whole thing,’ he said. ‘He stepped right in and took control of the situation.’
After pulling Jessie Dye, whose car was involved in a two-car collision in front of Shanks’ home, safely out of the car, Walker ‘jogged off into the sunset,’ said University of Georgia Police Chief Asa Boynton.
Can we please honor the man?
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We need Herschel statue at the stadium, along with a few others. And I like Dooley Field. The fact that it annoys Leeburn and Adams is just a nice bonus.
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Dude, I picked up “Behind the Hedges” yesterday because of this post. It’s an eye opener to say the least. I get now why some of the posters here have such an issue with Adams and Leeburn. Wow.
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Ah the wonderful Leeburns….
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If you have a problem with Dooley Field, you do not know the man. There are very few or maybe no men that have the moral character of this man…
Now regarding Herschiel. I think there should be 2 statues of Mr. Walker, one in the front of Dooley Field and one at the back entrance. Both should be about the size of the Statue Of Liberty.
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Pisses off all the right people.
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