The Bulldog elite comprise a tight circle of friends and acquaintances where everybody knows everybody else. Barbara Dooley had heard rumors about Don Leebern’s girlfriends for years but had always dismissed them. Some folks are jealous of anyone with Leebern’s kind of money, she reasoned. “Anyway, if he was having affairs, he was being discreet about it, as far as I knew, and I assured everyone that he loved his wife, Betsy.” That changed in early 2000 when Leebern began a very public affair with Yoculan.
Leebern began showing up at the Gym Dogs meets with his wife Betsy and their grandson. Surprised to see her friend at a gymnastics meet, Barbara wondered about Betsy’s sudden interest in the sport. “She sort of rolled her eyes and said, ‘Well, Don had to come.’”
Betsy Leebern soon stopped coming to the gymnastics meets and then she stopped attending UGA football games. She’d make excuses to avoid weekends with the Dooleys.
“She just wasn’t going to tell me there was trouble,” Barbara Dooley said. “And I was too stupid to realize what was actually going on. Betsy always made excuses during football season that Don could no longer come on Friday nights and they were just going to fly in for the game on Saturdays. Next she started making excuses why they would not go to New York with us as we had done for many years. It was a wonderful tradition to be in New York for the [College Football] Hall of Fame dinner with good friends, but it just ended. Things just started changing! The next thing that I hear is that he’d actually taken up with Yoculan.”
One Sunday morning she awoke to a local newspaper article written by the late M. A. Barnes, announcing the engagement of Don Leebern to Suzanne Yoculan.
“I screamed for Vince and I truly almost fainted,” she said. “I could not believe what I was reading. And I must have read it three or four times to make sure I was actually reading it right. It was the talk of the town and most people were shaking their heads and saying, ‘What the hell is he doing?’ He had given Yoculan an engagement ring and is still married to Betsy. And put it in our paper! I am still in denial at this point and kept thinking that just can’t be true.
“Still even with this staring me in the face I thought our friendship was strong enough for me to call him and find out just what was happening. So, I called his telephone number. I said, ‘Don, what the hell are you doing? I just read an article about your engagement. Are you totally out of your mind? You are setting yourself up for the biggest lawsuit this state has ever seen.’ Well, he was silent for a minute and gave me an answer like, ‘Mind your own business. I know what I’m doing.’ At that point I realized our friendship was over and I needed to stay out of this mess. And so I told Vincent at the time, I said, ‘Let me tell you something. I am drawing a line in the sand. This is against every principle in my body. Betsy is a good friend of mine and I will not condone any relationship like this.’”
Barbara Dooley said she began to avoid all functions where Leebern and Yoculan might be present. “Every time we’d get an invitation I wouldn’t go. He would have to go by himself. And of course I would say I don’t know why you’re going.
“He said, ‘Well, look, I’m the athletic director.’”
“I said, ‘Yeah, and you should have fired her ass right away.’ I said if that had been a male coach moving in with a married woman, the male coach would have been fired. The press would have been all over it. There’s no way they could let that story alone. But it seems that it’s totally different with a female. It’s just amazing.”
Barbara Dooley’s sense of outrage wasn’t felt at the highest levels of state government where money apparently talks more loudly than traditional morality, even in the heart of Baptist Bible belt.
Barbara Dooley has kept up with her friend Betsy vicariously through mutual friends and relatives. “She quit returning my calls a couple of years ago. I feel very confident that Don told her to stay away from me, and because he pays her bills . . . But her daughter came into our box during one of the games and literally had tears in her eyes and said she missed us terribly. She said, ‘I just want you to know that we love you.’ And I have to say, every time I get sick—and I’ve been sick a lot in the last three years—I always get flowers from Betsy. I always get a card from Betsy on my birthday saying I miss you and I love you. But she won’t call me. I find it very interesting.”
Vince Dooley was Yoculan’s direct superior and tried to maintain a casual friendship with Leebern even after the couple moved in together and the affair became the topic of dinner conversations in Athens and Atlanta. Meanwhile, the athletics department was concerned about the NCAA watchdogs. The school was already in trouble with the NCAA for rules violations in the men’s basketball program. The UGA Athletics Department’s mission statement on integrity declares:
By their very nature, athletics inevitably involve character development; for this reason, especially, we must conduct ourselves with utmost integrity. All programs and the activities on our behalf by alumni and friends must be consistent with the policies of the university and the athletic bodies which govern us. We are to be at all times honest and forthright in our dealings with each other, the public, and the media.
The question was whether Leebern’s actions in living with a university system employee constituted a conflict, since the Regents have oversight of the entire university system.
Georgia’s NCAA compliance coordinator, Amy Chisholm, wrote to the Southeastern Conference in July 2001 inquiring whether Leebern and Yoculan’s living arrangement could be a violation of NCAA rules because of Leebern’s role as an athletics booster:
Specifically, a head coach [Yoculan] is engaged to a representative of Georgia’s athletics interest [Leebern]. The coach and representative have purchased a house together and will be sharing this house as of August. The coach would like to host meals for prospects and current student-athletes during official visits at their house without it being perceived as impermissible contact with an athletics representative. Although, legally at this time the representative is not considered a spouse . . . the NCAA has never legislated fiancés and other personal relationships.
Chisholm’s letter didn’t mention that the coach’s fiancé was already married. A few days later Chisholm received a reply from Beth DeBauche, then SEC associate commissioner for compliance, informing her that such contact would, in fact, be an NCAA violation: “According to the NCAA Membership Services staff, the answer to this issue is no. The athletics representative’s status is not changed by the fact he is engaged to the head coach. Accordingly, he cannot be involved in any recruiting activities.” A fiancé should not be present at any recruiting meals or activities either on or off-campus, DeBauche replied. The upshot was that the SEC and the NCAA said that Yoculan could host recruits at her house but Leebern should not be present.
This novel situation posed increasing challenges for the man who was the coach’s boss and the booster/fiancé’s longtime friend. By coincidence, Dooley’s relationship with Leebern began to sour just as Dooley was negotiating with Adams on a contract extension in 2001.
Riding the crest of her women’s gymnastics team’s SEC and national championships, Yoculan began angling for a promotion to become assistant athletic director. Her counterpart at the University of Alabama, Sarah Patterson, was an assistant AD and was using the title to aid in recruiting. Dooley ignored Yoculan’s complaints, feeling it would have been unfair to elevate her over other coaches who had more seniority.
Afterwards, Leebern dropped by Dooley’s office. Barbara Dooley recounts the conversation as her husband told it to her:
“‘Buddy, I need a favor.’ Of course Vince said, ‘Sure, what do you need?’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, Suzanne really wants to be assistant athletic director.’”
Barbara Dooley said Leebern brought up that the Alabama gymnastics coach was an assistant AD and