with Donnan slowed, the impatient Adams did an end run around Dooley, the Athletic Board, and the Athletic Association lawyers who were negotiating the contract. Adams made an under-the-table verbal deal to pay Donnan roughly $250,000 should he be fired with three or more years left on his contract. The president specified that Dooley, the Athletic Board, and the Athletic Association’s attorneys King & Spalding must not know about the deal.
Donnan’s Bulldogs were 9-3 in 1998 and finished the season with a come-from-behind victory over Virginia. The team dropped to 8-4 in 1999 but came from behind to defeat Purdue in the Outback Bowl. It marked the first time since the 1981–83 seasons that Georgia had finished their season ranked among the top sixteen teams in the polls. However, Georgia lost its final regular season game to hated Georgia Tech.
When the Bulldogs finished the 2000 season with an 8-4 record and again lost the final regular season game to Georgia Tech, Adams let it be known he was unhappy. “Our special teams [stink],” he told reporters after the game. “We can’t tackle. We don’t stay in our lanes. We just don’t cover.”
Later that week Adams fired Donnan, implying that there were “off the field” problems with the football program without specifying what they were. Rumors swirled that some team members were into drugs. Donnan felt obliged to respond saying flatly, “We don’t have any drug problems on our team.”
(Donnan’s successor Mark Richt couldn’t say the same. In 2003 campus police were called to McWhorter Hall where they arrested five football players and one basketball player on charges of drug possession. In that case Adams, who had helped recruit Richt from Florida State University, saw fit to say nothing. Richt was winning even more football games than Donnan had and was 3-0 versus Georgia Tech.)
The dismissal of Donnan triggered the secret $250,000 buyout clause that Adams had been hiding from Dooley and the Athletic Association. In January 2001, Donnan’s agent, Richard Howell, wrote Adams demanding that the university honor the agreement and pay Donnan. After Adams refused to discuss a settlement and weeks passed, Howell also contacted the Athletic Association attorney, Ed Tolley of Athens, and told him about the secret agreement. Tolley went straight to Dooley’s office.
“Are you aware of this secret deal?” Tolley asked.
Not only was Dooley not aware of it, he could hardly believe what he was hearing.
After consulting with then-Chancellor Stephen Portch, Adams came to Dooley’s office to explain. Adams acknowledged his “mistake,” Dooley recalled. But he blamed Jim Nalley, a wealthy Atlanta car dealership owner and friend of Donnan’s, who was acting as a go-between in the negotiations. “Adams told me if he wasn’t trying to get a lot of money out of him he’d tell him what he thought of him,” Dooley said.
The question then became what to do next, since the agreement hadn’t yet been made public. Dooley set up a meeting. Attending the meeting were Dooley, his personal attorney Nick Chivilis, and Tolley and Floyd Newton of King & Spalding, who were representing the Athletic Association. Adams sent on his behalf Steve Shewmaker, executive director of the Office of Legal Affairs, the university’s top lawyer and a personal friend whom he had brought to Georgia from Kentucky.
Shewmaker stunned everyone by suggesting the Athletic Association, which is funded by public donations, simply absorb the $250,000 without bringing the matter to the Athletic Association board, thus avoiding public exposure. This proposal smacked to the others as a cover-up and they quickly rejected it. They opted to bring the matter to the board for approval.
Shewmaker later told Deloitte & Touche auditors he didn’t recall suggesting they keep the Donnan payment secret, but everyone else at the meeting remembered it that way.
On April 17, 2001, the Athletic Association executive committee met in the executive conference room at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education on the UGA campus. Adams, who chairs the Athletic Association Board, called the meeting to order and began the discussion of Donnan’s contract. Rather than acknowledge a mistake, however, Adams implied the secret agreement was a misunderstanding.
According to minutes, “Dr. Adams said a verbal statement he made while Coach Donnan’s contract negotiations were underway was taken as a commitment to extend the contract by six months should he be released from his duties before the expiration date of the contract.”
The executive committee approved the payment unanimously and the full board approved it a week later.
Before the firing, however, Dooley, perhaps out of empathy for a fellow coach, had wanted to give Donnan another year to turn the team around or at least give him an opportunity to find another job. Dooley had met privately with Donnan and told him that he was going to recommend one more year but warned that he was not sure of the president’s reaction to the recommendation.
As events unfolded, however, Adams then met with the Athletic Board members to get counseling. The board backed his decision to fire Donnan. Afterwards, Dooley, perhaps because of his many years as a football coach, felt obliged to make public his feelings that Donnan deserved another year to right the ship.
Some felt Dooley’s comments were inappropriate. “I was on the Athletic Board and I favored firing Donnan,” said Hank Huckaby, then a senior vice president. “When Vince came out and said he’d give him [Donnan] another year, I’d have fired him [Dooley] right then.”
Huckaby said Donnan was fired for multiple reasons including suspicion of a lack of team discipline and “going 7-4 every year.” Also, he said Donnan lacked good political skills.
Dooley said he felt it only fair to let it be known at the press conference that he had recommended another year with the decision ultimately resting with the president. “In good conscience, I had to tell the truth about what I had recommended, though, as I stated at the time, the president had the right to make the final decision.”
In his autobiography written with AJC sportswriter Tony Barnhart and in subsequent interviews for this book, Dooley expressed his disappointment at being forced to retire earlier than he wanted. Other long-term coaches and athletic directors, like Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech, Bear Bryant at Alabama and Darrell Royal at Texas, all had a say in their retirement, he said. Dooley said Adams wanted to put his own people in every position regardless of how proficient an individual might be at his job.
In his second year as president, Adams told Dooley that unnamed “key people” were not happy with Dooley as athletic director. “He said, ‘You’ve done a good job here, Vince, but you never want to stay too long. And, you need to have something named after you,’” Dooley recalled in his autobiography. “My first thought was, now that’s a crafty way to make a change. Is he thinking that I would want to resign in order not to stay too long and to have something named after me? Is he hoping that I will comply and gracefully retire on my own?” Soon, Dooley said he started hearing rumors, especially from his wife, Barbara, that Adams wanted to replace him. Dooley said he dismissed the rumors. He should not have.
As the rumors grew more persistent, Dooley wrote Adams a letter on December 15, 2000, asking for a four-year extension of his contract. Three days later the two men had a follow-up discussion on a flight to Tallahassee, Florida, to interview Mark Richt for the head football coach’s job. Dooley said he offered a compromise of three more years as athletic director and two as a fundraising consultant after his retirement. It was an offer that Dooley didn’t really want, but he proposed it in the spirit of compromise to avoid a controversy. And while in Tallahassee, Dooley said, Richt asked him, in Adams’s presence, how long he expected to remain as athletic director. Dooley told him that he expected to remain for at least three years to help him get the program off to a good start. Adams said nothing at the time or on the return flight from Florida,
