Derek Dooley leans on football glory and gaffes in Georgia Senate race

Shuttling between donor meetings this week, Republican Senate candidate Derek Dooley pulled out his phone and delivered a former coach’s take on how to beat Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff.

“My first answer is simple: Just watch the tape. Watch the film,” he said. “Your film is your résumé.”

In his opening drive of his U.S. Senate bid, Dooley is leaning into his decades on the sidelines of college and NFL teams — warts and all — as a defining feature of his campaign.

Unlike his GOP rivals, Reps. Buddy Carter and Mike Collins, Dooley says he built a career mentoring young athletes rather than chasing elected office.

That means owning the low points too, including a three-year tenure at the University of Tennessee that ended with a 15-21 record and strained relations with donors, fans and former players.

Opponents have wasted no time seizing on those years. Collins has plastered social media with clips of deflating Tennessee losses on Dooley’s watch, and told GOP crowds the Senate race is too important to bank on an “experiment.” Democrats circulated segments of sports talk hosts mocking his candidacy. And Carter outlined his critique at a recent Henry County GOP meeting.

“He wasn’t a star. He wasn’t a successful coach either,” Carter told the crowd, adding that Dooley isn’t ready to take on Ossoff.

“This is serious stuff now — I don’t want to hear about, you know, we’re just going to put this to a popularity contest,” the Savannah-area lawmaker said. “That’s not what this is.”

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

For Georgia Republicans, this feels familiar. In 2022, University of Georgia legend Herschel Walker steamrollered the GOP field only to lose to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in a runoff.

Dooley is the son of Vince Dooley, the late UGA coach who flirted with runs for governor and Senate, and Barbara Dooley, who launched her own bid for Congress in 2002. But Derek Dooley has hardly expressed any public political views, let alone run for office, until now.

Much like former Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler ran on their business backgrounds during their first bids for office, Dooley is making clear in his first campaign stops he’ll lean into his coaching background.

He’s quipped he’d rather highlight his nine years of coaching under retired legendary LSU and Alabama head coach Nick Saban and his nine years in the NFL than his Tennessee record.

“I have a 28-year career in coaching, and I spent 32 months in Knoxville — and that’s all anybody wants to talk about,” he said Thursday during a WDUN radio interview in Gainesville.

“You had to build a level of trust. You had to inspire them. And you had to work hard every day to try to make a positive impact on their lives,” Dooley said of young athletes. “That’s no different than the people of Georgia.”

He added: “I may not know ‘politics,’ as people say it, but I do know people.”

This isn’t some quixotic long shot. He’s got a crucial ally in Gov. Brian Kemp, a longtime Athens friend who sees Dooley as an outsider who can fire up the Republican base and still appeal to swing voters.

Jason Shepherd, a Kennesaw State University political scientist and former Cobb GOP chair, said those who describe him as a “failed coach” should tread carefully.

“I wonder how many of them could successfully coach a T-ball team, let alone a team in America’s toughest conference or the pros,” he said. “Wins and losses aside, he’s done what many Americans wish they could do, but only a tiny fraction have actually done.”

Of mistakes and bad breaks

For Dooley, the Senate run means revisiting one of the more turbulent chapters of his life. After several years practicing corporate law in Atlanta, he traded the courtroom for the sidelines. Tennessee hired him in 2010 to steady a struggling SEC powerhouse. He quickly ruffled feathers.

“He made some mistakes in terms of dealing with some of the former players. He made some mistakes on the field, and he got some bad breaks as well,” said Jimmy Hyams, a veteran Tennessee sports writer and broadcaster.

“He was smart, but I also thought that there were times that he felt like he was the smartest guy in the room, and that rubbed some people wrong. There was a little bit of arrogance that went along with it.”

Credit: Brant Sanderlin bsanderlin@ajc.com

Dooley’s tenure at Tennessee ended with a deflating 4—19 mark in SEC play. He became the first Tennessee coach in 27 years to lose to Kentucky, and his Volunteers posted three straight losing seasons, the first such streak since 1910—11.

In 2010, his team infamously lined up 13 players on the field for LSU’s final snap — a gaffe that gifted the Tigers the win.

“Out-mangling Les Miles at the end of a game? Now that takes some talent,” USA Today sports columnist Dan Wolken wrote.

Collins, who is seeking to chip away at Kemp’s support, is reminding voters of those sideline blunders while casting himself as a Donald Trump loyalist who has been on the political field for the president — not watching it from the stands.

“We need somebody up there that knows they’re MAGA and can speak to the MAGA people,” the second-term lawmaker told the Muscogee County GOP this week. “Well, brother, that’s me.”

Some political veterans see a silver lining to that past. Dooley didn’t give up, going on to spend a decade more in the coaching ranks, working with passionate fans and donors while being, scrutinized by the media.

Credit: TNS

“Dooley is accustomed to media relations and will likely try to cultivate a more conventional conservative tone,” said Nathan Price, a University of North Georgia political scientist. “That being said, there are always risks in nominating a candidate who has never run for elected office, especially in a race that is going to get as much coverage from the media as this one.”

Dooley wouldn’t be the first former coach to make the leap into politics. Fans rallied behind Auburn’s Tommy Tuberville in his successful 2020 Senate bid.

Dooley said he’s confident the lessons from the gridiron will translate to politics.

“Nothing’s going to get handed to you,” he said. “You’ve got to get out there and earn it.”