Mobile Native Son Vince Dooley: Legendary Former Georgia Football Coach Turns Botany Enthusiast

Former Georgia Head Coach Vince Dooley and father of Tennessee Coach Derek Dooley has serioulsy remade himself following his long coaching carrer.  He has become a serious Botany enthusiast and even publishing his own book last year on the subject.  He recently visited his hometown of Mobile to check out the plant species on family property along the Mobile Delta.  Here is an article from today's Mobile Press-Register on the visit.

Pigskin Latin: Vince Dooley, Mobile-Tensaw Delta son, comes home speaking in tongues

By Ben Raines, Press-Register Press-Register
MOBILE, Alabama -- The legendary college football coach called them out from memory.
One after another, complicated names spoken in a secret code only a few understand. 

Vince Dooley gazes at the peninsula that divides Polecat Bay and the Spanish River in the lower Mobile-Tensaw Delta. As a boy, Dooley visited his mother's family in a home on the peninsula, where they raised cows, farmed vegetables and occasionally sold an alligator skin. (Press-Register/Ben Raines)

But the words slipping across Mobile native Vince Dooley’s lips weren’t football plays. They were the Latin names of plants.
Gliding through a narrow creek deep in the heart of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, the man who coached Herschel Walker and the Georgia Bulldogs to the national championship in 1980 was revealed to be a serious botanist.
To continue reading:  http://blog.al.com/live/2011/08/pigskin_latin_vince_dooley_mob.html