Derek Dooley didn't win a lot of college football games as a head coach at both the University of Tennessee and Louisiana Tech, but Dooley was virtually untouchable behind a microphone.
The former head coach who lampooned his team's "shower discipline," likened his Vols players to World War II troops on the lookout for famed Gen. Erwin Rommel and declared that then-South Carolina running back Marshon Lattimore had looked like racehorse "Secretariat" running through the Vols' secondary has declared he is pondering a run for United States Senate in his native Georgia.
Dooley would run in the 2026 midterm elections, if he elected to pursue his first-ever political office.
"Georgia deserves stronger common-sense leadership in the U.S. Senate that represents all Georgians and focuses on results — not headlines,” said Dooley in a statement he released that confirmed his intent to explore a run as first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I believe our state needs a political outsider in Washington — not another career politician — to cut through the noise and partisanship and get back to real problem solving.”
Dooley, who would run as a Republican, would oppose incumbent Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff; Republicans presently control the U.S. Senate with a 53-47 edge over their Democrat rivals.
The son of the late Vince Dooley, a legendary former Georgia Bulldogs coach who won a national title at the school and also helped bring the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta, Derek Dooley has not coached in college football the past two years after Nick Saban retired from Alabama and Dooley departed the Crimson Tide. He had been a longtime Saban assistant both early in his career and in his final days coaching, after also serving as a longtime NFL assistant for the Dallas Cowboys.
He was an attorney in the posh Atlanta area of Buckhead when he exited that profession and launched his coaching career as a graduate assistant coach at Georgia in 1996.
A year ago, Dooley began working to form a Group of Five college football playoff -- a possibility that hasn't received much discussion in recent months.