Dickey wins by following his heart
“Let me show you the coolest thing,” said Memphis offensive coordinator Darrell Dickey, as he reached for his cell phone.
He scrolled through photos. Searching for the coolest thing. Until he finally found it.
It is a picture of his daughter, Meredith. Hugging Memphis running back Doroland Dorceus on the field at the Liberty Bowl after the Tigers’ 48-44 win over Houston.
“I took that,” said Dickey, beaming. “I was here to take that.”
Which is really the coolest thing about the coolest thing. Because it wasn’t always obvious that Dickey was going to be here to take that photo. And it certainly wasn’t obvious that Dickey would be back for yet another year on Mike Norvell’s staff, this time as the offensive coordinator.
“It just worked out,” said Dickey. “It doesn’t always work out.”
Especially not when a coach makes the unconventional choice to put family over football.
But that’s what Dickey did, 18 months ago, when Justin Fuente left Memphis for Virginia Tech. Dickey served as offensive coordinator under Fuente at Memphis. Fuente asked him to come along.
“The natural thing as a coach is to say, ‘Hey, let’s go, we’re moving,’” Dickey said. “I went home and told my wife and daughter and said, ‘I gotta go to Virginia Tech.’ My daughter Meredith said, ‘I’m staying here for my senior year of high school.’ ”
Meredith was a junior at Houston High School at the time. She played volleyball, had loads of friends. Dickey understood why Meredith would want to remain in Memphis. He and his wife, Tory, agreed with the decision.
“They were going to stay here,” Dickey said. “I was going to go back and forth on weekends. As a coach, we’d done things like this before. If you get hired in December, you go ahead and your family comes later, after school ends. So we had done three or four months. But this was a year and a half. This was 18 months. As time went on, I started thinking, ‘Eighteen months is a long time. I won’t be there for her volleyball games, I won’t be there when she goes to prom. I’ll miss her senior year. And that’s when I decided to see if Coach Norvell might keep me on for at least one year.”
What happened next is rare in the world of college football. Everyone acted decently. Dickey decided he wanted to put his family over his career. Fuente supported the decision. He even told Dickey to take all the time he needed to figure out if he could stay at Memphis. If not, a job at Virginia Tech would be waiting for him.
“A lot of people would have said, ‘Get your butt over here now or I don’t have anything for you,’ “Dickey said. “Justin was a good man. He is a good man.” See what I mean? Football coaches, acting decently. But there was still the matter of getting a job under Norvell. The two men had actually met the previous summer, when the Memphis staff traveled to Arizona State, where Norvell was the offensive coordinator, to learn about Norvell’s offense.
So the two weren’t complete strangers. But that’s not what persuaded Norvell to keep Dickey around.
“Just watching the bowl practices, you could see how the players were drawn to him,” Norvell said. “He’s all about relationships. That was obvious. I made him my first hire as a head coach.”
It was still a risk for both parties, especially Dickey. He wasn’t the offensive coordinator any longer, he was the running backs coach. And who knew what would happen after the year was done?
“I took the job with the understanding it might only be one year, and I was OK with that,” Dickey said. “It was a little risky on the career side. I could have been out. But I got to be here for Meredith’s senior year, and that’s what mattered.”
Dickey went to nearly all Meredith’s volleyball games. He was there for Senior Night and the prom. And Meredith was there for her father’s big games, including the Houston win.
“Our kids are around here all the time,” Dickey said. “We eat here after practice. I have the players over to my house. Meredith got to know the players, she looks up to them, thinks the world of them.
“After the Houston game, she and Doroland were on the field. And I took that picture. It even has the score in it. When I look at it, I think, ‘Oh, my God, I might not have been here for that.’”
So all’s well that ends well, right? Except, the story gets even better. Because this past offseason, Memphis offensive coordinator Chip Long left for Notre Dame.
“Coach Norvell and I were out recruiting,” Dickey said. “And he had a number of options to fill the job. I told him, ‘I’m comfortable either way. Look into what your options might be.’ I wasn’t, like, ‘If i’m not the coordinator, I’m leaving.’ I did express interest, but I told him whatever he did was fine with me.”
Norvell picked Dickey. Dickey was thrilled. When spring practice opened Thursday, he was back at his old job, at a place he never wanted to leave.
Maybe there’s a lesson there. About following not just your ambition, but your heart.
“I made a choice for family reasons, and it worked out professionally, too,” said Dickey.
What could be cooler than that?