Barbara Dooley Is a National Treasure

In case y'all wondered, I love Barbara Dooley. Absolutely. Love. Her. That's why her banning from the radio was tough for me to take. As a way of saying goodbye we had her on 3HL this afternoon and, as always, Momma Dooley was must listen radio. I'd encourage y'all to click the link here and listen to the entire interview. But, as I try to do on the site, I'll take some of the most entertaining quotes from her interview with us and include it for you here.

But, again, I beg you, click on the link and listen to the woman. Merely reading her words doesn't do her justice, she's a storyteller, a stand-up comedian who happens to be a coaches wife and mother. She needs her own reality television show.

Barbara Dooley called in to the show as she drove north to Knoxville for the home opener against Montana. "I'm 66 miles from the Tennessee border where I can put on my orange," she said.

Asked whether she'd recovered from the end of the Music City Bowl, Barbara replied: "At the end of that game I was in utter shock, watching my son for the second time win a game and then lose it instantly. Unbelievable."

"I have decided the greatest trivia question would be what team shook hands eight times in a season to win but only had six victories." She said she'd discussed the games with legendary coach Vince Dooley and Vince had said, "I've been through this for years and that never happened (to me) and it's happened to Derek twice in one season."

In response to a question about whether it was more difficult to watch Vince coach or her son coach, Barbara deadpanned: "It's much harder as a mother because some times you want to kill your husband."

Addressing the current flare ups in the NCAA, Barbara Dooley said she had the solution: "May I say that a woman needs to be the head of the NCAA? These men, first of all, can't make a decision. Second of all, they can't decide which way the wind is blowing to handle their decision. A woman not only could get the NCAA straight but we could get the whole United States straight."

Barbara Dooley also confessed that Lucille Ball, another red head, was one of her role models and that her favorite episode of I Love Lucy was when Lucy worked in the candy store. Which led to a radio transition where I pointed out that Lucille Ball's son never made her stop doing television.

Barbara loved that.

"See y'all just take one little sentence and go with it," she said. Then she gave us the whole story on how her radio career came to an end. You're going to love this.

"We were at Derek's bowl game (the Music City Bowl) and I had my brothers, their wives, my children, their husbands and wives, my grandchildren, and I got a phone call that said, 'Mom, come to Derek's room, we're all in here visiting.' So I ran down to Derek's room thinking I was going to have this wonderful family visit. They are sitting in a circle and they are having an intervention for me. I said, 'What?" They said, 'Come sit in the center of the circle, we are intervening for your mouth.'

I said, 'What?'

So they sat me down and everybody in the circle made several negative remarks about me on the radio. And so they all agreed that I couldn't do it anymore. And so my deal is, I'm not doing a regular show right now. But the minute Derek Dooley wins his first SEC championship, they ain't holding me to anything then.'"

Asked for the most embarrassing story any of her children told about her, Dooley replied:

"The worst that my daughter tells is when her child was six years old...they wanted a swimming party at our house and i said, 'Sure!'

So we had ten little six or seven year olds for the birthday party and they were all at the pool and I jumped in and pulled my top down and I said, 'We're gonna skinnydip!'

And they all whipped their bathing suits off and my daughter was horrified. She said, 'I cannot believe I got calls about my child's birthday party that her grandmother skinnydipped with all the kids.'"

"I just have to keep'em loose, baby, I keep 'em loose," Dooley cackled.

Finally, Barbara, who confessed to me yesterday that she would be missing some UT games this fall because she was getting a knee replacement, informed us about that surgery: "I have got a new knee ordered and I have asked the doctor to get a tattoo with a big T on the right side and the G on the left side so that when my knee goes through airport security it will say T and G."

Again, I'd encourage you to go listen to the entire interview. You have to hear her tone, her pauses, and her cackles. I'm not sure there's a more entertaining woman in the SEC. In fact, I'm pretty certain there isn't. 

Once more, I demand, Free Barbara Dooley!