Former UVA Football walk-on Derek Dooley rallied to clinch a spot in the June 16 run-off for the Republican nomination for Jon Ossoff’s U.S. Senate seat from Georgia, but per the latest polling data, he’ll need to pull off another comeback to win the primary.
Dooley came in second in the five-candidate primary contested on May 19, receiving 30.2 percent of the vote – Congressman Mike Collins got 40.5 percent to finish atop the field.
It was, for all intents and purposes, a three-candidate race – between Collins, another red-meat MAGA congressman, Buddy Carter, and Dooley, the son of legendary UGA Football coach Vince Dooley.
The Dooley family is close to the sitting governor in Georgia, Brian Kemp, who threw his political machine – and its millions – behind Derek Dooley, to the consternation of one Donald Trump, who is not a fan of Kemp, and was said to prefer either of the two MAGA congressmen.
Dooley overcame that obstacle, in large part, because the two MAGA congressmen split the MAGA vote – Carter came in third in the primary, with 25.1 percent of the vote.
Dooley won’t have that working for him now that it’s a one-on-one with Collins.
The latest polls have Collins leading Dooley in the mid-double-digits.
Dooley, a double-‘Hoo – earning a BA in government and foreign affairs in 1991, and a law degree in 1994 – had 41 catches in four seasons, from 1987-1990, with a career-high 27 catches for 422 yards and two TDs in 1990.
The 1990 team is the one that spent three weeks at #1 in the national polls.
Dooley practiced law briefly before getting back into football, taking a job as a grad assistant at Georgia in 1996, then working his way up the coaching ladder.
You might remember him being in the mix for the UVA Football coaching job in 2009 after Al Groh was let go.
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He ended up taking the head coaching job at Tennessee, where he replaced Lane Kiffin.
Dooley only last three seasons at UT, all three with losing records, before moving on to a series of assistant positions in the SEC and NFL.
His name popped back up in UVA Football circles in 2021. An alum wrote to me to suggest that there was an effort, after Bronco Mendenhall stepped down as the head coach, to get Carla Williams to put Dooley on her short list.
I don’t think Dooley was a serious candidate the second time through.
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Chris Graham
