'Caveman' made big plays in early years of UAB football

In the early years of UAB football — when the program was moving from club football to NCAA Division III and hadn't yet reached the FBS level it occupies today — most of the guys on the roster were what they were. They were Division III football players. Very good high school players who were an inch too short or a step too slow or a few pounds too light. They came to UAB and they played football at the level the program was offering it.

But there were a handful of players on those early rosters who looked like they had no business being there. You saw them and you wondered how they ended up in Division III instead of Tuscaloosa or Auburn or Knoxville.

Terry Dollerson was the best of them.

Teorris "Terry" Dollerson, who played football at UAB from 1991 to 1994, has died. He was 55. He had lived and worked in Birmingham since finishing at UAB. In April 2025, he called his mother. "Come get me, mama," he told her, complaining of stomach pain. He came home to Florence. Doctors diagnosed colon cancer. He died Oct. 7, 2026. He is survived by a wife, two sons and a daughter.

They called him Caveman. He was 6-foot-1, 210 pounds, chiseled like a statue. But he ran like a deer and hit like a train. Jim Hilyer, who coached UAB's first teams and had spent time as an assistant at Mississippi State, Auburn and in the NFL with the Washington Redskins, called him "one of the best natural athletes I've ever coached." His teammate Cedrick Buchannon, a wide receiver who saw Dollerson in practice every day, put it more directly: "TD was the best athlete I've ever seen at UAB on any defense. Hands down."

To understand how rare that is, consider that those same UAB rosters produced Josh Evans, an All-American defensive tackle who played a decade in the NFL and started for the Tennessee Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV. Ask the players from that era who the best athlete on the team was, and they don't say Evans. They say Caveman.

"Terry was always smiling," said former UAB linebacker Alan Spooner. "What an amazing athlete he was."

His mother, Johnnie Dollerson, had her own way of putting it. He never played professionally, but that didn't matter to the people who watched him grow up.

"He was a pro in the neighborhood," she said.

Dollerson grew up in Florence, a four-year letterwinner at Coffee High School in football, basketball, baseball and track. When his senior year approached, letters arrived from Tennessee, Auburn, Georgia, Ole Miss and others. The interest was real. The offers were not. When it came time to commit, none of them came through.

He had no intention of going to college. His English teacher pushed him. His mother, Johnnie Dollerson, would not relent.

"I had a lot of people pushing me," Dollerson told the Birmingham News in 1991. "My English teacher, Phillis Ronnie, was sort of like a tutor. She spent a lot of time working with me. And my mother said I had to go."

He was heading to North Alabama, 10 minutes from home. Then Hilyer sent Joe Cribbs — the former Pro Bowl running back who was UAB's running backs coach — to Florence to recruit him. Cribbs was the closer. Dollerson enrolled at UAB to play ball.

"But I didn't want to leave Florence," Dollerson told the Birmingham Post-Herald in 1994. "Football is in my heart."

From the day he arrived, they moved him everywhere. Running back. Fullback. Linebacker. Cornerback. Defensive end. He was the No. 2 rusher on the team behind Pat Green as a freshman and also returned a blocked field goal 64 yards for a touchdown against Lindenwood. Hilyer admitted the coaching staff wasn't fair to him.

"It's a lot of things to learn in a short period of time," Hilyer told the Birmingham News that fall. "But when we send him to a new position, he just lines up and goes at it."

Dollerson never complained about it.

"When I come to practice and they tell me I'm at another position, I just line up and play," he told the Birmingham News in 1991. "I don't care where I'm playing. I just want to be out there."

He missed the 1992 season for academic reasons. Hilyer let him come back. When he returned in 1993, his coaches saw a different person. Not a different player — the same relentless, do-anything athlete. But a different person.

"Terry reminds me a lot of myself when I was his age," said Smokey Hodge, a former Auburn star who coached UAB's linebackers. "He had a lot of discipline problems when he first came in, like I did at Auburn. He was in and out of trouble."

Hodge said that changed.

"His attitude has changed. His dedication to school and to the team is just tremendous now."

On a Saturday afternoon in November 1993, UAB hosted Dayton at Legion Field before 7,428 fans. It was a collision between two programs in transition — both had recently moved up from Division III. But Dayton was a powerhouse. The Flyers carried a 56-game unbeaten streak, the longest in the nation. They had the top-ranked defense in Division I-AA, allowing 8.7 points per game.

UAB led 17-3 at halftime. Then Dayton came back. The Flyers cut the lead to 17-12 and stopped UAB on a fourth-down rush near midfield. Momentum had shifted entirely.

Dollerson wasn't in the UAB game program. His name wasn't in the media guide. He'd been back on the team for only a few weeks and had played just two weeks at inside linebacker after spending his career on the outside.

Dayton called a play from its playbook labeled 70 Falcon. Wide receiver Alan Ruth lined up wide, read the outside linebacker and curled. Quarterback Tony Ernst made his read and threw toward Ruth.

Ernst didn't see Dollerson.

"I made the right read," Ernst told the Dayton Daily News after the game. "They had an extra linebacker in there. He came out of nowhere."

Dollerson jumped the route, caught the pass and cut toward the far sideline. Dayton fullback Pat Hofacre gave chase. Hofacre said he touched Dollerson's foot.

"I thought I was going to get him," Hofacre said. "But he was too fast."

He returned it 68 yards for a touchdown to put UAB ahead 24-12 and end the longest unbeaten streak in the nation.

"All I saw was the end zone," Dollerson said.

"That was the biggest play of my career," Dollerson told the Post-Herald the following year. "That really turned the whole game around. I was overwhelmed."

UAB won 27-19. It was the biggest victory in the program's young history, and it put UAB on the national radar for the first time. Dollerson — the guy who wasn't in the program, who had missed the previous season, who was playing a position he'd held for two weeks — made the play that defined it.

He finished the 1993 season with 37 tackles and a sack. By his senior year in 1994, UAB played him at left defensive end, right defensive end, inside linebacker and outside linebacker. The only position they wouldn't put him at was nose guard.

"They could put me anywhere," Dollerson told the Post-Herald before the 1994 season. "I never know. I might play nose guard this week."

What Dollerson talked about most in that interview, though, wasn't football. It was going home.

"I want to go back to my hometown and help out in my high school," he said. "I want to help some of the young guys out, show them that they can make it, too. They really do need it."

"I want to be a leader. Even if it's just to go back to a recreation center and work with kids. I want to help them like people have helped me."

His mother said that was who he was — not just what he planned to be.

"He didn't take nothing, but yet and still he was good to people," Johnnie Dollerson said. "He would do his last for anybody."

He talked about the distance between the kid who arrived at UAB with no plan beyond playing ball and the person he became there. He talked about teachers who couldn't believe the turnaround. He talked about his coaches telling him that if he could make 10 tackles on the field, he could make 10 A's in the classroom.

And he said something that stays with me, all these years later.

"The football is fun, and the classroom isn't bad," Terry Dollerson told the Birmingham News in 1991. "I had no idea I would ever enjoy poetry."

A memorial service will be held Saturday, Oct. 17, at 2 p.m. at Christ Chapel Church in Florence.