Watch out Tommy Tuberville, another former SEC football coach could be on his way to the nation’s capitol. Former Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley is “weighing” a run for a Senate seat in Georgia, the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Greg Bluestein reported on Friday.
The son of legendary Georgia football coach Vince Dooley, Derek Dooley is considering a run as a Republican against the incumbent Democrat Jon Ossoff. The Georgia Senate seat is expected to be one of the most hotly contested elections in the 2026 midterm.
Dooley spent three horrid seasons as Tennessee’s head coach from 2010-12. Perhaps the worst of the Vol football coaches in the dreadful stretch between Phillip Fulmer and Josh Heupel, Dooley led Tennessee to a 16-21 record.
The Vols failed to earn wins over SEC rivals Florida, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina during Dooley’s tenure while also dropping a game each to Kentucky and Vanderbilt. Tennessee just once made a bowl game under Dooley, losing to North Carolina in the 2010 Music City Bowl.
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After his time at Tennessee, Dooley spent five years as the Dallas Cowboys’ receivers coach before returning to college football as the offensive coordinator at Missouri for two years. Ironically, Dooley took over as Missouri’s offensive coordinator after Josh Heupel left to become the head coach at UCF.
Dooley returned to the NFL for two seasons as an assistant coach for the New York Giants before becoming an offensive analyst under Nick Saban at Alabama. Dooley was inside Neyland Stadium in 2022 when Tennessee ended its 15-game losing streak against the Crimson Tide.
The former Tennessee head coach did not spend the 2024 season coaching football and presumably moved back to his home state of Georgia where his father was a highly successful Bulldog head coach in the 1970s and 80s.
