Doug Dickey played quarterback at the University of Florida when Robert Woodruff (Athletics Director at UT when Dickey was appointed head football coach) was head coach. After graduation he coached for a year at a high school in St. Petersburg, Florida (1954), and coached at Fort Carson, Colorado (1955–56), while in the armed forces. He then went to Arkansas (1957–63) as an assistant, coaching defense for four years and then serving as head offensive coach for his final two seasons.
In 1964 Dickey became Tennessee’s head football coach, taking on a program that had not been to a bowl game since 1957. At UT he introduced many of the traditions that are in place today—the Power T on the helmet, checkerboard end zones, the Tennessee walking horse performance at home games, and “running through the T.” After three losses in his first year, the Vols were 24-2-2 the next five years, going undefeated at home in 1967, 1968, and 1969. They were SEC champions in 1967 and 1969. The 1967 Vols were selected as national champions by Likenhous and were also recognized in the NCAA record book. Dickey was named SEC Coach of the Year in 1965 and 1967.
In 1969, with UT scheduled to play Florida in the Gator Bowl, it was widely rumored that Dickey would leave UT for Florida following the bowl game. UT President Andy Holt and UT Knoxville Chancellor Weaver both denied the rumors, as did Dickey. Following the bowl game, he announced he would be going to Florida. He was head coach at Florida for nine seasons and then went to Colorado for one season as assistant head coach.
Dickey had been in business (General Manager of Florida Tile Centers) for four years when he returned to UT in 1985 as athletics director, replacing Robert Woodruff. As athletics director, he oversaw building projects that established the UT’s athletics physical plant as among the best in the nation. Under his watch, seating in Neyland Stadium rose to more than one hundred thousand. He also increased the level of giving to athletics from an annual $800,000 to more than $15 million annually.
He retired as athletic director in 2003. At the halftime celebration of his service to UT in 2002, President Shumaker announced the formation of the Douglas A. Dickey Hall of Champions in the Brenda Lawson (then McKenzie) Athletic Center, where all individual and team champions over the years were to be recognized.
He is an inductee of the Knoxville, Tennessee, and Gator Halls of Fame, and in 2004 was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach of UT and Florida teams. He was the first recipient of the John H. Toner award, the highest honor bestowed on an athletics director by the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame. The UT Letterman’s Club inscribed his name on a bench near the Letterman’s Wall in tribute to his contributions to UT athletes.