Lots of Coach Bill Dooley stories floating around today and you have to think back to the days of Don McCauley, the great Tar Heel RB who later played for the Baltimore Colts, and the QB from Elkin, Johnny Swofford and the two-thousand yard running backfield of James ‘Boom Boom’ Betterson and Mike Voight and the tough times back in the Summer of 1970 when the death of Bill Arnold of the Tar Heel football field during Summer practice rocked the Triangle in a sad/bad way…
He coached at UNC, Virginia Tech and at Wake Forest and in the minds of most observers, Bill Dooley was always a winner and there was nothing better than catching Coach Dooley and his strong ‘Southern Drawl’ talking with Woody Durham on the Carolina Football Show on Sunday afternoons on WFMY TV, just after church and right before Sunday dinner…
The thing I will remember most about Coach Dooley was that night back in 1973 when he came to my high school sports banquet and he was the guest/featured speaker and the ‘Old Coach’ told our high school football coach Doug Henderson as the two were talking and Coach Dooley saw me walk by, well ‘ole Coach Dooley said, “If that kid keeps growing, I want that kid”….
With me being only in the 9th grade and not a bad young football player at all, the chances were I would grow some more and I did put on 50 pounds of shear power, but no more height at all…Maybe a half-inch and that was it and Coach Dooley did not need players that were around 5’9 and 200 pounds, unless they were defensive backs and they ran a 4.4 40 and that wasn’t me brother..
Coach Dooley could see a diamond in the rough, but he also knew were to draw the line and even though I never made to his football fields in Chapel Hill, I did enjoy all of his legendary battles with Lou Holtz and the other great ACC coaches…
Coach Dooley gave me the time of day that night and I will never forget what he said and he was a good guy and a good coach…
Another sort of wild and crazy story I had heard about Coach Dooley and it is sort of funny to look back on it now was the time he burst into the sorority house there in Chapel Hill and ran all of the football players out and went on in and made himself at home…
RIP Coach Dooley, he was a good man and a good coach and he will be missed by so many of his fans and followers…
I’m thinking with your size and extreme power you had, that they could have used you as a blocking fullback. Occasionally on 3rd or 4th and short yardage, a carry or two. They didn’t call you Moose for nothing!
I feel the same way Hornet 77…I was the fullback at Guilford Middle School for all of 3 days and then line coach Rick Edwards said we’ve got to have some blockers…
Got moved to the line and the rest there was history…Still think as an FB it would have been better because I could have gotten a running back start with the blocks, but oh well I did get the outstanding lineman award a couple of times..
Got to play LB in Junior High and in college and liked that better than DL…
Still think my top spot could have been as a defensive back, like a strong safety…
Lots of memories and not enough dreams I guess….But if you back to the 70’s in that Guilford College community they knew who “The Moose” was, but they haven’t and still to this day ever even heard of Andy Durham…
Changed animals in college and used the “Bull Durham” name…
Too much water under the bridge here…