Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,065

This is the grave of Bobby Dodd.

Born in 1908 in Galax, Virginia (a town I know for its outsized role in early country music history, including being the hometown of the great Ernest Stoneman), Robert Lee Dodd (yep, named for the traitor, welcome to the South) grew up mostly in Kingsport, Tennessee. Despite not being a big kid, he got into the game of football. That game had started as a way for Ivy League rich kids to prove their masculinity to themselves by beating the shit out of each other on the field in a civilized, rule-bound way as to imitate war, which is why Theodore Roosevelt was so interested in it. But it soon caught on in the South like gangbusters. Dodd was one of those kids super interested in playing this new game. Despite his size, he made his high school team and became the team’s quarterback and kicker.

Dodd grew enough and was good enough that the University of Tennessee offered him a scholarship. These were dominant teams in the late 20s, coached by the legendary Robert Neyland. Dodd was key to those teams. He started 30 games at quarterback for the Vols and the team went 27-1-2 between 1928 and 1930. He was the QB on the All-American Team in 1930 (a tradition started by the sportswriter Grantland Rice), making him only the second Volunteer to gain such a honor.

As Dodd was graduating, he was looking for something to do. The NFL had formed in 1922, but wasn’t a realistic option for Dodd, not that the league paid enough to make it worth anyone’s while at that time. So coaching became the better option. His senior year, Georgia Tech was looking to improve their program. Their coaches asked Neyland if he had anyone he thought would make a good coach. He pointed the Yellow Jackets to Dodd. Head coach William Alexander hired him and Dodd started there as running backs coach in 1931. He was immediately seen as a head coaching material. Over the next decade, he would get many offers. But he stayed at Georgia Tech as an assistant until Alexander retired in 1944, while also being the head coach of the baseball team from 1932 to 1939. Then Dodd got the promotion to head coach of football.

Dodd was the head coach of Georgia Tech from 1945 to 1966. Especially in the early years, Dodd coached some great teams. At the time, Georgia Tech was in the SEC and they won the conference in 1951 and 1952, defeating Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl the latter year to complete a perfect season and win a claim to the national title, though in fact the AP voted the Yellow Jackets #2 that year, behind Michigan State, who gets the title banner for that year in a sport that proved incredibly resistant to settling these questions on the field.

Dodd had an unusual reputation too. Most of these coaches who hit the big time–think Bear Bryant or Woody Hayes–were known for being total hardasses. Lots of screaming, lots of intense practices, maybe even hitting players (which is what got Hayes fired finally, when he did it to an opposing player). Dodd didn’t play those games. He didn’t yell, he didn’t put teams through intense practices. He also was serious about the players getting their education and going to class. Even at the time, sportswriters didn’t understand how he won with such soft methods. Sometimes, you still run into abusive coaches like this today and the culture of hypermasculinity is still very strong. It’s a violent game after all. But such tactics aren’t necessary and Dodd had a hell of a coaching career rejecting them.

Dodd also had a lot of success against his rivals. At the time, Alabama was a major rival and Dodd won almost half the games against that power. Even bigger, he beat loathed Georgia–still Tech’s biggest rival even though the Bulldogs are a far better program now–eight times in a row, which remains the longest winning streak in the series. But Dodd also led Georgia Tech out of the SEC. And for good reason–he thought the rest of the SEC were a bunch of cheaters and thugs. Much of this came out of his hatred for Bear Bryant. In 1961, Tech and Bama were playing in Birmingham. On a punt return, after the Tech player signaled a fair catch, a Bama player hit him as hard as he could and basically destroyed the guy’s face, causing multiple facial fractures, surgery, etc. Of course that’s just a 15 yard penalty. Dodd wanted Bryant to suspend the player. Bryant refused. Bama had already won that game and would go on to win its first national title. Dodd decided this was not the kind of game he had signed for and left the SEC.

The other reason he left the SEC is that it had become common in the conference for the teams to basically cheat. Effectively what they would do is recruit as many players as possible, without limits. They would then just keep the best ones and cut the rest. At the time, NCAA rules allowed colleges to have up to 140 players on scholarship in football and men’s basketball. And you could take up to 45 players a year. Well, 45 x 4 is a hell of a lot more than 140 slots. The teams would take advantage of this, take 45 every year, and cut the guys who hadn’t succeeded. Of course things like this have always happened. In today’s transfer portal era, there’s are lots of cuts as there are also lots of players making a lot of money by transferring. It goes both ways. Well, Dodd thought this was outrageous and unsportsmanlike.

In short, Bobby Dodd was not a man for the new SEC or the SEC we see today. He was a man for the SEC by being pretty squishy about integrating his team. Unlike a lot of SEC teams, Dodd’s Yellow Jackets would play teams that had Black players, starting with a game against Notre Dame in 1953. But the team did not integrate itself until 1970. By this time, Dodd was just the athletic director. He stepped down from coaching after the 1966 season. He remained athletic director until 1976.

Dodd started so young that even though he had been at Georgia Tech for seemingly forever when he finally retired as AD, he was only in his 60s. He would live and be around Tech football until his death in 1988, at the age of 79.

Bobby Dodd is buried in Kennesaw Memorial Park, Marietta, Georgia.

If you would like this series to visit other college football coaches, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Bobby Bowden is in Trussville, Alabama and Bear Bryant is in Birmingham, Alabama. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.