Derek Dooley grew up in Athens, the son of legendary Georgia football coach and athletic director Vince Dooley. Now 43, he’s the head football coach at Tennessee and will lead his team into battle against the Bulldogs for the second time in two seasons.
It didn’t go so well last year in Athens, where Dooley’s Volunteers fell 41-14. On Saturday, the two teams will meet again, this time at Neyland Stadium.
Dooley took time for a one-on-one telephone interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday night.
Q: So the most important questions first. What about the orange pants you’re wearing for games?
A: Yeah, it's kind of gotten a life of its own I guess. But, you know, it's Tennessee. We're orange. If you can't wear orange with pride then you shouldn't be the head football coach at Tennessee. And so, it's been good. My mom looked at them and she thought they were awful looking. I reminded her that her husband wore red pants on the sidelines. And she says, 'yeah, but that's red.' And I said, 'Well how many people walk around town wearing red pants?' So you just get conditioned to what you're around, and they feel pretty normal to me.
Q: Did someone recommend them or were you inspired in some way?
A: They did a documentary, ESPN did, called "The Color Orange." It was the Condredge Holloway story, a great documentary when they did the year of the quarterback. So I was just looking at old footage of the old coaches back in the '70s and they had the orange pants on, and just said, 'well, why not?' That's what college football is all about to me, the school sprit and the pride in your school and your team. It's just a good way to show some pride and solidarity in Tennessee. And the fans love it. They love winning more. The winning's more important than the orange pants, and the orange pants aren't going to get us any wins.
Q: So how do you feel about that? This is Year Two for you in what was a major rebuilding job. How do you feel the program is progressing?
A: You know, we've improved. You've heard me say in the offseason a lot that last year felt like Year Zero. So I feel like we're in Year One now given what had happened the last three years. And that shows up a little bit. We're a better football team than we were a year ago. How good we are we'll find out in these next eight weeks. Of course, our challenge is our youth and inexperience. I mean, over 70 percent of our team is freshman and sophomores. I think we're around 17 starters who are freshmen and sophomores. When you've got 17 underclassmen starting for you, it's tough. So we've had growing pains. You want to do a lot more schematically to give them a chance, but then, if you get them not playing fast and confident, it's going to be worse.
Q: You’re playing Georgia now for the second time. Do you feel like the Georgia angle gets overplayed with you since you grew up in Athens and your father is the legendary football coach who won a national championship there?
A: It's funny. My dad quit coaching in 1988. That was 23 years ago. That's a long time. And since that time I've been affiliated with the University of Virginia. I've been affiliated with SMU. I've been affiliated with LSU. I've been affiliated with the Miami Dolphins. I've been affiliated with Louisiana Tech, and now I'm affiliated with Tennessee. So over time, it comes down to that old saying, 'Home is where you hang your hat.' You become really emotionally tied to the players and the coaches that you're around. And so you don't really feel any nostalgia when you go play somebody else because that's a whole different group of people.
When you talk about this Georgia game, it’s a lot harder on my family than it is on me. Because my family, they’ve been Georgia fans their whole life. My dad bleeds red and black, so it’s hard on him. But that’s not me. I didn’t even go to college at Georgia. [He did graduate from UGA’s law school.] I bled red and black when I was 12. You know what I mean? So I think people make this a bigger deal than what it is.
Q: Speaking of your parents, do you reach out to your father for any tangible advice football advice or did you learn all you needed growing up with him and following his career?
A: I think it's fair to say most of it is embedded in me from years of being around him. But we do talk every week. I kind of update him on where we are. Now and then I'll ask him his thoughts on some things. He always has great insight, as you would expect. But he doesn't really mettle. He never has in my life, and it's one of the things I've really appreciated about him as a dad. He will be quick to point out when things need some correcting; he doesn't totally keep his mouth shut. But he also doesn't try to tell me how to coach, so to speak, and I appreciate that from him. But you know what? He's always been like that. As a parent, he felt like you needed to go out there and flap your own wings ... so you can learn. He was not one of those parents who were so protective they never wanted to see their children hurt or fail.
Q: This seems like a fantastic matchup on Saturday, with one of the nation’s best offenses facing off against one of the nation’s best defenses. What are your thoughts on Saturday’s game?
A: Well, I don't like the matchup like you do, because Georgia is playing as good on defense as anybody. The last three games, there's nobody in the country that's played as good on defense as they've played. They've been excellent on third down, nobody's running ball on them very well, they're great against the pass. So we've got our work cut out for us. We'll just see how we do. We're going to have to be able to run the ball somehow because we can't get in one of those throw-it-50-times games. We're not very good when we do that. ... So we'll see. We'll put up our guys against their guys and that's why you play it. We'll see if we can handle it. I don't know if we can. We didn't handle it very well in The Swamp. We'll see if we've improved any this time.
About the Author
