Chansky’s Notebook: The Trench Fighter

Bill Dooley had some big wins at UNC from his very first season.

When Dooley took over Carolina football in 1967, he ran off about half of the squad he had inherited. Spring practice was more like boot camp, and those who survived it could stay around and play for the Tar Heels in the fall. Those who couldn’t cut it turned in their pads and spent their autumn Saturdays watching from the stands.

And although Dooley’s thin squads won only five times his first two seasons, Carolina did whip Duke twice in the last game behind quarterback Gayle Bomar and upset nationally ranked Florida in a driving rainstorm in Kenan Stadium. The Tar Heels weren’t that great at football but they were tough as nails, and every opponent knew it.

In 1969, Dooley unleashed a tailback named Don McCauley on the ACC, and McCauley wound up the school’s all-time leading rusher. He is still Carolina’s top running back among three-year players with 3,172 yards, 279 of them in his final home game against Duke when McCauley scored five touchdowns.

That 1970 season was Dooley’s first winner and his first bowl team. The Tar Heels lost to Arizona State in the old Peach Bowl that began under clear skies but ended in a near blizzard. The next year, Dooley won his first of three ACC championships and lost to Georgia and big brother Vince in the bruising Gator Bowl, 7-3. They repeated as ACC champs in 1972, going 11-1, losing only to Ohio State, which discovered a freshman running back that day named Archie Griffin.

Carolina posted six winning seasons in Dooley’s last eight years before he went to Virginia Tech as football coach and athletic director. By then, every ACC school that did not have a tough guy for a football coach had either hired one or fallen to the bottom of the league. Dooley brought a Southeastern Conference mentality and winning tradition to UNC; his 11-year tenure was followed by 10 under Dick Crum and 10 more under Mack Brown, both of whom also had mostly winning teams and played in bowl games regularly.

It was after Dooley retired from coaching and split his time between Raleigh and Wilmington that his image softened and he became beloved by his former players. All the Tar Heels who had survived Dooley’s boot camps were now men in their coach’s eyes. Every one of them still living will be at Dooley’s memorial to say goodbye, and thanks, to the old trench fighter, their coach and friend.

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Chansky’s Notebook: The Trench Fighter

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