Ranking Tennessee football coaches who played for rival schools
Pick Analysis. 1964-1969. 46-15-4. 1. Scouting Report. Doug Dickey. player. 839
Alma mater: Florida Gators
Just before Bill Battle took over, Doug Dickey was head coach of the Tennessee football program. He led what could be called a renaissance period of the Vols that brought them into the modern era in many ways.
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Included in that renaissance was UT recruiting its first African American players, the Vols moving away from the single-wing that they used dating back to the 1920s to instead use the T-formation and Dickey installing a bunch of new traditions, including the Power T on the helmet and running through the T. Simply put, Dickey was the spark the program needed.
The crazy part is he provided that spark coming from a program that UT would eventually grow to hate, the Florida Gators. They wouldn’t hate Florida at the time, though. In two of the three years Dickey played at Florida from 1951 to 1953, the Gators played the Vols and lost both times.
Anyway, Rocky Top was initially not ready for all the new changes. Dickey took over for Jim McDonald, who was there for a year after Bowden Wyatt was there for eight years. His first year, he went 4-5-1. That made for the Vols’ third straight non-winning season, their eighth straight season without a bowl and their fourth straight season without a top 20 finish.
However, the next year, UT took off. The Vols went 8-1-2 and finished in the top 10. That launched a period of 10 straight years with a bowl appearance and top 20 finish. Dickey won two SEC Championships and a retroactive national championship. Ironically, future Florida coach Steve Spurrier, who was from Tennessee, was playing for the Gators and won the Heisman in 1966.
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Another part of Dickey’s renaissance was giving Tennessee football its first real quarterback with his T-formation in Dewey Warren. After six years on the job, he bolted for his alma mater, Florida, and coached there for a decade. But he returned to the Vols as athletic director and then hired Phillip Fulmer, establishing a new modern era for the Vols in the mid-1990s.