Former UVA Football walk-on Derek Dooley was defeated, soundly, in his bid for the Republican nomination to run for the U.S. Senate in Georgia.
The Tuesday runoff primary was won by Congressman Mike Collins, who had the endorsement of one Donald Trump.
Dooley, the son of legendary University of Georgia football coach Vince Dooley, had the backing of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Trump foe.
Dooley had won a spot in the two-candidate runoff after Collins and another MAGA congressman, Buddy Carter, split the votes of the far-right voters in a May primary.
Collins had won the May 19 voting with 40.5 percent, with Dooley at 30.2 percent and Carter at 25.1 percent.
Seeing that, Dooley’s 44.5 percent showing in the run-off, not bad, if you’re into moral victories.
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 as a walk-on with the UVA Football team, 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
