It was just over 40 years ago, on July 25, 1985, that legendary University of Georgia football coach Vince Dooley shut down the rampant speculation that he was going to run for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in the 1986 election. A comment he’d made just three weeks earlier that he might join the race had fueled feverish excitement among Georgia Democrats, who saw him as the best hope to unseat incumbent Republican Mack Mattingly.

Longtime UGA political science professor Charles Bulloch remembers the commotion on campus over whether Dooley would take on the senate race.

“He certainly was taken seriously,” Bulloch told me. “I remember talking to him about it. He was a very bright guy. He had a masters in history. But he’d never run for office. He was plugged in and had lots

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