Serving as head football coach at UGA and as Director of Athletics, Vince Dooley has had an enduring impact on the University of Georgia, Southeastern Conference, and collegiate athletics across the country. His national stature has been great and was reinforced in 2004 as he was named recipient of the James J. Corbett Memorial Award presented annually by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) to the collegiate administrator who "through the years has most typified Corbett's devotion to intercollegiate athletics and worked unceasingly for its betterment." The award is the highest honor one can achieve in collegiate athletics administration.

Dooley’s 25 years as head football coach earned him the distinction as the most successful coach in Georgia history. He guided the Bulldogs to a career record of 201-77-10 becoming only the ninth coach in NCAA Division I history
to win over 200 games. The Bulldogs won one national championship (1980) and six SEC Championships under his direction. He took his teams to 20 Bowl games and coached a Heisman Trophy winner (Herschel Walker, 1982), a Maxwell Award Winner (Walker, 1982), an Outland Award Winner (Bill Stanfill, 1968), 40 First Team All-Americans and 10 Academic All-Americans. He was named NCAA National Coach of the Year by every major poll in 1980 and by Chevrolet-WTBS in 1982. A former president of the American Football Coaches Association, Dooley was named SEC Coach of the Year seven times and NCAA District Coach of the Year on six occasions.

As Director of Athletics, his leadership translated onto the fields of competition as well. There is no stronger indicator of Georgia's overall athletic prominence than its success in the annual Directors Cup national
competition which annually measures athletic success of schools across the country. Under Dooley, Georgia's final rankings include a second place finish in the 1998-99 season, third place finish in 2000-01, fifth place in
2003-04 and top ten finishes in five of his final seven years as Director of Athletics. In his final year as Athletic Director (2003-04), Georgia was the SEC recipient of the first ever Excellence in Athletics Cup, an award based
on a total athletic program performance in eight distinct categories.

He was also been a standard-bearer for academic excellence. Under his leadership, more than 100 Georgia student-athletes were named first team Academic All-America, more than 50 received NCAA Post-Graduate Scholarships,
seven have been named recipients of the SEC's Boyd McWhorter Scholar-Athlete of the Year award, seven NCAA Top Eight Award winners, three NCAA Woman of the Year recipients, two Walter Byers Award winners, and well over $275,000 has been awarded to the University's general scholarship fund through performances by Georgia student-athletes.

His community service and charity work is extensive and includes work with the Heart Fund, Multiple Sclerosis, Juvenile Diabetes, Boy Scouts, the homeless, and he is currently serving on the Advisory Board of the Salvation
Army. He and his wife, Barbara, co-chaired a fund-raising campaign to establish a Catholic high school in the Athens and northeast Georgia area.

Dooley is married to the former Barbara Meshad of Birmingham. They have four children: Deanna (Mrs. Lindsey Cook), Daniel (married to the former Suzanne Maher), Denise (Mrs. Jay Douglas Mitchell), and Derek
(married to the former Allison Jeffers). The Dooleys also have eleven grandchildren: Patrick, Catherine and Christopher Cook; Michael and Matthew Dooley (Daniel and Suzanne); Ty, Joe and Cal Mitchell; and John Taylor,
Peyton, and Julianna Elizabeth Dooley (Derek and Allison Dooley).