Prior to an evening ceremony celebrating the naming of UGA’s new Indoor Athletic Facility (IAF), distinguished Billy Payne and Vince Dooley, Georgia’s legendary head football coach from 1964-1988, took the media for a walk down memory lane.

Long before spearheading the effort to bring the 1996 Summer Olympics to Atlanta, serving as chairman of Augusta National, and earning the naming rights for the school’s IAF, which now bears Payne’s name along with his father Porter’s—the William Porter Payne and Porter Otis Payne Indoor Athletic Facility—Payne played football under Dooley during the mid-1960s.

“I remember him first of all as a quarterback at Dykes High School (now Sutton Middle School located on Paces Ferry Road in Atlanta),” Dooley said of Payne. “It was pretty obvious… he was not a quarterback.” To which Payne interjected, “He didn’t tell me that.” (Laughter)

“But it was obvious that he was a football player,” Dooley added.

Payne was part of Georgia’s 1965 signing class, or what Dooley claimed was probably the second-best recruiting class during his 25 years as the Bulldogs’ head coach, which also included eventual All-Americans and College Football Hall of Famers Jake Scott and Bill Stanfill. As a sophomore in 1966, he led Georgia in receiving with 15 receptions for 153 yards and two touchdowns including, according to Dooley, “one against Kentucky where both of them (Payne and the defender) went up in the end zone, and he was able to use his competitive spirit and big hands to wrestle the ball away and end up with it.”

At the time, somewhat ironically, Payne never even imagined there would be an indoor practice facility at Georgia.

“I remember Stegeman [Coliseum] (then the Georgia Coliseum) at that time was relatively new, very new, and on a rainy day, we would go in there and mess around in the basketball area—nothing more than staying out of the rain, really,” Payne said. “We would walk through a few plays, but never even remotely thought you could practice football in an indoor arena.”

Dooley indicated that while he was head coach at Georgia, there was often new construction or expansion of athletic facilities developing—building projects which didn’t always have optimal results.

“[The football offices] did move into the Coliseum, which was big in those days. The Coliseum is where we had walkthroughs as an indoor facility,” Dooley said. “The Coliseum, if I remember, [once] had 176 leaks. It had 176 buckets around to catch the water.”

Beyond a new basketball arena featuring a very leaky roof, Payne recalled a Georgia game in 1967 when the Bulldogs were astounded by another indoor venue—and an amazing opposing running back they encountered.

“We went to Houston to play in the Astrodome when I was a junior—I think our first experience in an indoor football stadium,” Payne recalled facing the Houston Cougars inside what was had been nicknamed the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” “I remember, unfortunately, we got beat by [Houston] and the reason was that we were all just looking around and couldn’t believe what technology had done. We got beat by a good team and a great running back, Paul Gibson.”

Playing in Georgia’s first game indoors and on an artificial surface, some Bulldog players were seemingly so in awe of the Astrodome, they reportedly ripped up the turf, placing pieces of it inside their helmets to take home as souvenirs. After Georgia held a 14-0 advantage in the final quarter, Houston rallied behind Gipson, who ripped through the Bulldogs’ defense for 229 rushing yards and led the Cougars to a 15-14 comeback victory.

While playing football at Georgia, Payne demonstrated the same extraordinary leadership qualities he’d become well known for in the coming decades, including even apparently saving the Bulldogs’ championship season of 1968.

“He’s got quite a record, and early on, the leadership qualities were so evident,” Dooley said of Payne. “I’ll tell you a story…”

According to Dooley, the aforementioned Jake Scott was probably as good an athlete that’s ever played at Georgia; however, the standout safety and return man was the team’s “most spirited athlete,” whose behavior was a “challenge.” Prior to the start of the 1968 campaign, the head coach had finally had it with Scott’s off-the-field antics, whereby he decided to kick him off the team—that is, until the squad’s seniors, led by Payne, approached Dooley with a recommendation for their troubled teammate.

“So, I remember [the seniors] coming to me and saying, ‘Coach, we don’t like what Jake did, and we don’t like his free spirit,'” Dooley said. “'But, we want to win a championship. Please give Jake one more chance. We can’t win it without him.’”

Payne jokingly added, “I think I said, ‘If you kick him off the team, we all quit.’”

Accordingly, Scott was an integral part of Georgia capturing a conference title that season—its second in three years.

Fifty years (and seven more SEC football championships) later, while Payne’s professional career has transpired into one that is essentially unparalleled, the athletic facilities at the University of Georgia have progressed to where they’re perhaps unrivaled.

“We have always been fighting to try to get ahead of the next person, facility-wise. It’s still the case,” Dooley said. “I’d say today nobody has it better than Georgia.”

As for Payne, who has come a long way since playing football at Georgia a half-century ago, he is appreciative and proud of his school and its athletic facilities, which have come a long way, as well, culminating with the state-of-the-art indoor venue that now bears he and his father’s names.

“I am glad to see that the University of Georgia is staying at the top. I commend the university and athletic association—it is very important,” Payne stressed. “You recruit great players for a lot of reasons—one of which is the environment where they spend most of their time. And this (the IAF) is not a bad place to spend 12 hours a day.”