History written in the names of our stadiums

Vince Dooley joins the quite esteemed company today of those whose names are set in concrete and adorned by green and gridded fields. These names are the names of college football, the very coordinates of the game, the address of all the passions it incites.

He joins the likes of Hugh Inman Grant, whose merchant father, John, contributed $15,000 in 1913 to build the first permanent stands at Georgia Tech in memory of his late son. Grant Field at Bobby Dodd Stadium remains a destination all these years later.

Come this afternoon, Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium will be the center of the Bulldogs circle. That is the denomination of this particular church. Just as Bryant-Denny is at Alabama and Jordan-Hare is at Auburn and Vaught-Hemingway is at Ole Miss.

What’s in a stadium/field name? They are history lessons all. They are tributes to citizenship and accomplishment.

For instance, at Mississippi State, they combined a bygone Olympic track star — Don Scott, who made the 1920 and ’24 Games — and the co-founder of AFLAC Insurance — Floyd Davis Wade. The result: Davis Wade Stadium at Scott Field.

Often, the name’s all about largess. Yes, Virginia plays inside Scott Stadium. But the proper name of the place reflects a laundry list of donors. By the time you finish asking for directions to the Carl Smith Center, Home of David A. Harrison III Field at Scott Stadium, it’s already the second quarter.

Look at Dooley now, in the company of an orange baron (Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at Florida) and a one-time ambassador to Guatemala (Kyle Field at Texas A&M).

Yes, the occasional old coach gets his name appended to the house he helped build, too. Like Bear Bryant at Alabama, Shug Jordan at Auburn (where the field also bears Pat Dye’s name), Steve Spurrier, who was added to the field at Florida, Wallace Wade at Duke and soon a certain former national championship winning coach and longtime athletic director at Georgia.

The habit of giving human names to college stadiums is not solely a Southern tradition, but it does seem a distinctly dominant trait down here where the game is of some great importance. The Big Ten — a conference ruled from places like Ohio Stadium and Michigan Stadium and Spartan Stadium and a couple of Memorial Stadiums — is more prone to the generic and the collective.

In these parts you’re just much more likely to run into a mammoth gathering place on campus that invites fans to be a part of a family — be that the Neylands of Knoxville or the Campbells of Tallahassee or the Kenans of Chapel Hill. You sit inside with the home crowd and you’re all part of the same clan.

Vince and Barbara Dooley will be happy to welcome you to their place eight Saturdays this season.

At least the change made at Georgia keeps to that path, being a very personal alteration, not a business one. Unlike the places that pros play, college stadiums in general have not given way to selling themselves to the highest bidding car corporation, insurance company or software giant. It’s not time just yet to commence the Dawg Walk outside Hulu Field at Pilgrim’s Pride Chicken Stadium.

A change of any kind to a place like this — “One of the revered stadiums in the country ... steeped in tradition with so many connections to all Georgians and especially Georgia football fans,” Bulldogs Athletic Director Greg McGarity said — is not something that would be taken lightly. After all, you wouldn’t blithely change the paint scheme at Mount Vernon or the roof line at Monticello.

In the current union of names, Vincent Joseph Dooley joins Steadman Vincent Sanford. Where Dooley did his best work in the 1980s, Sanford’s story is a vintage one, dating to the turn of the 20th century. His was a long, hands-on association with Georgia (190335 during which he rose to university president and founded the Grady School of Journalism). And extending beyond that to when he became chancellor of the state’s university system.

The direct ties to the man who organized the fundraising for the stadium that opened in 1929 are fraying with time. Each generation of fans is that much further removed from a man whose “name should always be the lead name on the stadium because that was spectacular,” said Georgia historian Loran Smith, referring to his fundraising at the doorstep of the Great Depression.

“Dr. Sanford was a wonderful Bulldog,” Smith said. “One of those iconic figures.”

To most members of the family, football hardly was the defining aspect of Sanford’s legacy. Ann Whitney Sanford, who was a professor at the University of Florida’s School of Religion, never met her great-grandfather. But, she said, “It impressed me what they always talked about with him was his background of teaching and research and the love of learning.”

The last Sanford to scrupulously guard the name on the stadium may have been his grandson, Charles, who died a year ago. He staunchly resisted the idea of cluttering up the Bulldogs stadium with any other name.

“Charlie did not want Dooley-Sanford Stadium, he fought against that, he really did,” Charles’ wife, Mary Sanford, said. “I think he wouldn’t be completely happy with the (naming of the field after Dooley), but he would be OK with it. He really didn’t want a double name on the stadium.”

Mary Sanford is the last living member of the family who actually went to Georgia — that’s where she met her husband. The couple contributed the lead gift to a student center for the university’s business school, and endowed a distinguished faculty chair there as well, both named after the Sanford family. It has been years since she’s been to a game at Sanford Stadium, and no member of the family plans to be on hand today when Dooley Field is celebrated.

Memories fade. Families scatter. Yet every time a football fan excitedly plans the next trip to Sanford Stadium, a name endures.

“I do have an emotional attachment still,” Mary Sanford said. As does anyone who spent any real time overlooking the hedges.

Welcome to this very college football brand of immortality, Vincent Joseph Dooley.

And when Kirby Smart wins his one or more national championships, wherever will they attach his name?

“We have plenty of time to work on those initiatives,” McGarity said, chuckling.

Vince Dooley, Georgia’s legendary football coach, joins esteemed company today.