Doolittle to get for start for Auburn

By Mike Szvetitz
Sports Editor, Opelika-Auburn News
Published: September 22, 2008

AUBURN — Tez Doolittle has a lot of friends.

And they are what keeps him going.

They comforted him after he shredded his Achilles tendon during two-a-days two summers ago and would miss what everyone thought was his final year playing college football.

They encouraged him through almost a year of grueling rehab.

They welcomed him back after the NCAA granted him a sixth year of eligibility.

They smile every time they talk about the hilarious noseguard who played his high school football at Opelika.

Tez Doolittle has a lot of friends.

And if it weren’t for them, the Auburn defensive lineman doesn’t know where he’d be. Anywhere but on the football field. Anywhere but back in Auburn, having a chance to speak to reporters. Anywhere but in the starting lineup.

Anywhere but here.

His teammates — his boys — kept him going.

“Really it was all the guys who would call me and say, ‘How you doing? You doing good? You gonna be able to come back?’” Doolittle said. “I kept coming back and forth to the complex talking to the compliance guys, they were like, ‘We’re working on it. We’re working on it.’

“When I finally got the call telling me I could come back, that meant a lot to me and the team. That’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Doolittle was supposed to be done with football. After already redshirting in his Auburn career for a separate injury, there’s no way the NCAA would let him come back for a sixth year.

And even if it did grant Doolittle another year, would he be ready? A lot of questions, no answers.

It takes 16 months to fully recover from a torn Achilles. And even then, most people still have problems.

Doolittle was done. Right?

“I was thinking ‘It’s over with, I’m never going to play ball again,’” he said, looking back on that hot August day, laying on the intramural fields after the injury. “That’s the only thing going through my head, ‘I’m never going to play ball again.’ I’d graduated. I wasn’t ready for a job at the time. I just wanted to play ball. That’s all I wanted to do.”

So he had surgery and started rehab.

Not an easy thing to do, especially when there’s no guarantee he’d be able to play, either because of the rules or because his body wouldn’t let him.

“Every day, all day, I’d just sit around the house and exercise and go home, everyday,” Doolittle said. “Exercise, go home. I wasn’t out, wasn’t doing anything but trying to get myself back.”

Sixteen months turned into eight months, as Doolittle worked himself skinny trying to get back into shape.

“They told me it was going to be 16 months or more,” he said. “I guess I got back in eight or nine months. I was working out three or four times a day. They had to tell me to stop working out because I was losing too much weight. I was working out up here with (head athletic trainer) Arnold (Gamber), I was doing stuff on my own and I was doing stuff in Atlanta just trying to get back.”

It worked.

Doolittle was cleared to play by his doctors and (gasp) the NCAA.

Saturday against LSU, he recorded his first sack since 2005, and played the best game of his career, said AU head coach Tommy Tuberville.
Doolittle has improved so much that the coaches are rewarding him with the starting nod this week against Tennessee.

It’ll be Doolitte’s first career start.

“(It’s) Awesome,” said Tuberville. “… He’s a guy who … all of us in here would be out riding motorcycles (instead of coming back). He wanted to play.”

And now he is.

“Me and P-Lee (former Auburn defensive back Patrick Lee) would always tell him just to stay calm and keep working on it,” said Sen’Derrick Marks, one of Doolitte’s closest teammates. “Really, that’s all he wanted to do was just play one more year. Me being close to him and hanging out with him the whole time, I know it meant a lot to him.

“It meant a lot to me just seeing him being happy and being able to do what he always wanted to do.”

It’s really a dream come true for Doolittle.

“I sat out all last year. I wasn’t around any football,” Doolittle said. “That crowd Saturday, you couldn’t hear anything. Everything’s going through your head. I was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m out here doing this again.’ I was just like a little kid all over again.”