Former Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley is officially getting into politics. The failed college football coach is running for a Senate seat in the state of Georgia.
Dooley is running as a Republican and is looking to unseat Democrat Jon Ossof who has served in the Senate since 2021. The 57-year old Dooley will have plenty of competition in the Republican Primary before potentially facing off with Ossof in the November 2027 election.
One of Dooley’s Republican challengers, Mike Collins, has already released an attack ad against Dooley criticizing the coach for always “staying on the sidelines.” The ad closes with three lines directed at Dooley— “never fights, never wins, never Trump.”
Not even an assassin’s bullet in Butler, PA could get Derek Dooley off the sidelines. He’s no fighter. pic.twitter.com/1Zdan8xDUw
— Mike Collins War Room (@TeamOverhaulGA) August 4, 2025
Tennessee can attest to Derek Dooley never winning. The son of legendary Georgia head coach Vince Dooley, Derek 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 15-21 record.
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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.
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.
