On Dec. 25, 1995, Claude Felton was packing the car for a holiday lunch with his in-laws when he got a call from John Shafer, the No. 2 man in Georgia’s athletic department. “Merry Christmas,” Shafer said. “Are you sitting down?”
Minutes earlier, athletic director Vince Dooley was informed by Glen Mason, who was introduced as the Bulldogs’ new football coach at an Athens news conference Dec. 18, that he decided to stay at Kansas. And ho-ho-ho to you, too.
Dooley was with his in-laws in Birmingham, Ala. Putting down the phone, he walked into the next room and told his wife Barbara, “We’ve got to go.”
Said Barbara Dooley, who in April 1980 saw a family vacation in New England spoiled because a high school senior named Herschel was signing a letter of intent on Easter Sunday: “You have got to be kidding.”
Said Vince Dooley: “We have GOT to GO.”
They piled in the car for the four-hour trip back to Athens, Barbara driving, Vince making calls. At the Anniston exit off I-20, they pulled into the Holiday Inn, where a kindly desk clerk allowed Vince to use a land line in a vacant office to dial Huntington, W.Va., and offer another man the job Mason had held for seven days.
To this day, Dooley insists he has never been told the real reason Mason reneged. (Speculation has long held that moving out of state would have complicated child custody for the just-divorced Mason.) Still, it’s worth noting that Mason would leave his beloved Kansas for Minnesota barely 51 weeks later.
But enough about Mason...
https://www.ajc.com/sports/college/...mason-spurned-georgia/XiAYRnTIloRvNkWdQuYPxK/
Minutes earlier, athletic director Vince Dooley was informed by Glen Mason, who was introduced as the Bulldogs’ new football coach at an Athens news conference Dec. 18, that he decided to stay at Kansas. And ho-ho-ho to you, too.
Dooley was with his in-laws in Birmingham, Ala. Putting down the phone, he walked into the next room and told his wife Barbara, “We’ve got to go.”
Said Barbara Dooley, who in April 1980 saw a family vacation in New England spoiled because a high school senior named Herschel was signing a letter of intent on Easter Sunday: “You have got to be kidding.”
Said Vince Dooley: “We have GOT to GO.”
They piled in the car for the four-hour trip back to Athens, Barbara driving, Vince making calls. At the Anniston exit off I-20, they pulled into the Holiday Inn, where a kindly desk clerk allowed Vince to use a land line in a vacant office to dial Huntington, W.Va., and offer another man the job Mason had held for seven days.
To this day, Dooley insists he has never been told the real reason Mason reneged. (Speculation has long held that moving out of state would have complicated child custody for the just-divorced Mason.) Still, it’s worth noting that Mason would leave his beloved Kansas for Minnesota barely 51 weeks later.
But enough about Mason...
https://www.ajc.com/sports/college/...mason-spurned-georgia/XiAYRnTIloRvNkWdQuYPxK/
