A Conversation With Douglas Burrell
| Publication year | 2021 |
| Pages | 0038 |
| Citation | Vol. 27 No. 3 Pg. 0038 |
A Conversation with Douglas Burrell
In this installment of the "Georgia Lawyer Spotlight," Editorial Board Member Jacob E. Daly interviews Douglas Burrell, partner at Drew Eckl & Farnham, LLP, and president of the Defense Research Institute.
BY JACOB E. DALY
You are originally from Iowa, and you have three degrees from the University of Iowa, so what brought you to Georgia?
I love Iowa, and I didn't ever think I would move. My now-wife got a job as a television news anchor in Macon, and so I followed her to Georgia.
A lot of people may not know that you played outside linebacker for the University of Iowa in the mid-1980s. What was it like playing for a major college football program?
It was an absolute thrill. We were No. 1 in the nation for most of 1985, until we went to Ohio State late in the year. We were winning the game, but when the weather changed, our fortunes changed. That was our only loss in the regular season. Because of that loss, our quarterback [Chuck Long] lost the Heisman Trophy to Bo Jackson in the closest vote at that time, and we lost the national title. It was great to be on a team that was chasing the national championship. The biggest takeaway from those years was the camaraderie among the players, and that remains to this day.
The 1985 season ended with Iowa playing in the Rose Bowl against UCLA. What was it like to play in front of more than 100,000 people?
I really don't remember much because we lost that game. When we played in the Rose Bowl, our chances of winning the national title were gone because back then one loss late in the season really derailed you. And so I don't think that, as a team, we were mentally prepared to play that game, and we lost. I've erased it from my memory for the most part.
The coaching staff on that 1985 Iowa team was impressive in terms of the number of assistants who went on to be successful head coaches.
Yeah, I'm really proud of that fact. Bob Stoops, the former head coach at Oklahoma, was a graduate assistant in 1985. Barry Alvarez, who is now the athletics director at Wisconsin, was our inside linebackers coach and went on to win a national title as an assistant at Notre Dame and then was the head coach at Wisconsin. Dan McCarney, who later coached at Iowa State and North Texas State, was the defensive line coach. Bill Snyder was our offensive coordinator, and he ended up turning Kansas State around and was a long-time head coach there. Don Patterson ended up...
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