Schultz: Kirby Smart honoring Vince Dooley the best way he can through coaching

May 23, 2024

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Kirby Smart felt a sense of peace. Sure, it had been an emotional 24 hours since he learned of Vince Dooley’s death. When Georgia’s plane landed Friday in Jacksonville, Smart turned on his cellphone, and it immediately dinged with text messages, including one from Dooley’s son, Derek. It hit Smart hard initially, and he still carried that with him the next morning when he addressed the players at a pregame meal.

“You could tell his heart was heavy about it,” Georgia center Sedrick van Pran said. “It seemed like it was taking a toll on him. Sometimes Coach Smart has a certain look when something’s on his mind, and it was one of those moments.”

But that moment was gone by the time Smart and his players walked through the stadium tunnel for Saturday’s game against Florida. The Bulldogs played another game that would’ve made the old football coach proud. They beat up the Gators 42-20, winning for the fifth time in the past six meetings, their longest run of dominance in this rivalry since the days of Dooley in the 1980s.

When it was over, Smart wore a relaxed smile. He went through his postgame news conference, then walked back toward an open door that led to the team’s locker room, hugged his son and stopped along the way to answer a question.

“Did you have a hard time holding it together emotionally?” I asked.

Smart shook his head.

“I’m so happy for Vince. He lived a great life. I texted his wife. I texted Derek,” Smart said. “They were like, this man could not have lived a better life. It would be bad if it was tragic, or if it was unexpected. But this man waited until his whole family got home. He waited until they got in the house with him, until he saw them all. He did it his way. So it wasn’t emotional for me. I’m just so happy for him because of the life he lived.”

Smart talked about chatting with Dooley the week before, telling old Georgia football stories. Dooley’s voice had become raspy, barely audible at times. But he was still sharp, still animated. Even Wednesday, he was seeing visitors at his home in Athens, signing books and looking over notes and lineups for Saturday’s game against Florida.

Smart knew the time was close. Everybody knew. But nobody ever really knows when these things happen, and Smart couldn’t make it to Dooley’s house Wednesday.

“I tried to go see him Thursday, but they had just given him morphine, and I didn’t get to see him,” he said. “I’m so glad I got to see him the week before.”

This was not just another football game Saturday. This was a fitting tribute.

The Bulldogs played a game in memory of the program’s most famous coach and former athletic director, dominated Florida for most of the day — notwithstanding a few third-quarter hiccups — and reaffirmed their status as a championship-level program with a chance to win another SEC title, another national title. They drove to touchdowns on three of their first four possessions. They led 28-3 at halftime and by that point had outgained Florida 346-88. The Gators failed to get a first down until their fifth possession.

Georgia had better players, better coaches and a better program, and it seemingly had something otherworldly going on. That’s the only way to explain a touchdown by (possibly mortal) tight end Brock Bowers, who somehow cradled a long pass from Stetson Bennett after the ball ricocheted three times off a Florida defender and Bowers grabbed it while doing a 360 and headed to daylight for a 73-yard touchdown.

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

Brock Bowers turns, tips and takes it to the house.

🎥 @CBSSports pic.twitter.com/cndGXIlZyg

— The Athletic CFB (@TheAthleticCFB) October 29, 2022

There was some drama — this is still Jacksonville. A couple of turnovers and a defensive breakdown on a 78-yard touchdown pass suddenly closed the Dogs’ lead to 28-20 in the third quarter.

But when Georgia has needed to turn it on this season, it has. It did so after some blah moments against Kent State, Missouri and Auburn. It did so again Saturday, immediately driving to touchdowns on consecutive possessions late in the third quarter and early in the fourth to inflate the lead from eight points to 22. The Bulldogs sealed it with a dominating running game that totaled 239 yards.

“Two things (can happen) when adversity hits: You fracture or you connect. This team connected,” Smart said.

Earlier, he said Dooley was “looking down on that one. He would’ve enjoyed the first half. I don’t know that he would’ve enjoyed the second, but he and Erk (Russell) probably had a laugh together about it.”

Smart was hired in 2015. Truth is, Dooley had mixed emotions about it. Georgia had fired Mark Richt, who was hired by Dooley and returned the program to prominence, winning two SEC titles in his first five seasons.

“I hired Mark and based on his record I would not have made the change,” Dooley told me and Zach Klein on the “We Never Played The Game” podcast in 2017. “On the other hand, (Smart is) who I would’ve picked if I was in that situation. … He’s brought a completely different personality than Mark.

“It was time for a change, I guess, and it was the right change.”

We taped that the week of that year’s Florida game. A few days later, Georgia won 42-7 and went on to win the SEC and come to within one defensive breakdown in overtime of winning the national title.

But Dooley got to see one more championship last year in Indianapolis. The night before the title game against Alabama, Smart got off the elevator on the 15th floor of his hotel to go to his room. When the elevator doors opened, he saw Dooley sitting there. He had locked himself out of his room and was waiting for somebody to bring him a new key.

Smart believed spiritual forces were at work. After the Bulldogs secured their first national championship in 41 years, he shared the story of their unplanned meeting.

“I thought God put him there for me to see him the night before this game,” he said. “I just knew that meant something.”

Smart recalled Saturday that in his early days as Georgia’s head coach, Dooley sometimes would sit in the stadium box with Smart’s family, but the coach’s children didn’t know who he was.

“They were like, ‘Who’s the old coach? Who’s the old guy?’” he said. “Now they know. They know the history and what he stood for and what he did for this university.”

Smart didn’t know Dooley well when he played at Georgia and really got close to him only when he returned as the head coach. But he should be comforted now. The program is back at the level it was under Dooley four decades ago.

(Photo: James Gilbert / Getty Images)

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