“Derek Dooley sucked. Tell us about it.”
As GOP U.S. Senate candidate Derek Dooley gets hand-held around Georgia by Brian Kemp, the residents of Knoxville, Tennessee are seeing a new billboard advertising DerekDooley.com, a new website launched last week to collect stories of the failed and fired former Tennessee football coach as he runs for U.S. Senate.
For over 25 years, Derek Dooley was completely absent from the state of Georgia, coaching at rival schools and bouncing around from job to job after multiple failures. Now, Georgians will get to learn a little bit more about his time out of state as a loser football coach as he runs for a Senate seat he is nowhere near qualified for.
USA Today: Have stories about Derek Dooley? GA Democrats mock senate hopeful in TN
By Irene Wright 3/13/26
KEY EXCERPTS:
- Primary season is upon us, and soon Georgians will be heading to the polls for the start of midterm elections.
- Currently, Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are serving in Washington, but Ossoff is up for reelection this year. It’s a crowded field to replace him on the Republican side, but no Democrats filed to race against the incumbent.
- Another name in the race is Derek Dooley, probably most well known for being the son of iconic University of Georgia football coach Vince Dooley, whose name now sits over the field in Athens.
- While the younger Dooley also went on to have a college coaching career, it wasn’t quite as successful as his father’s, and the Democratic Party of Georgia isn’t letting him forget it.
- In January, Dooley posted a video on social media questioning Ossoff’s voting record.
- “In football, your film is your résumé,” Dooley said […]
- Dooley spent three years as a coach at Louisiana Tech, where the team went 17-20 overall. Dooley then went to the University of Tennessee for another three years, where the team went 15-21.
- The Georgia Democrats were quick to jump on these comments, posting a video of their own in February challenging Dooley’s mostly losing seasons.
- “Let’s take a look at his film,” the post began.
- Now, the Party is taking it up a notch.
- Dooley spent more than two decades outside the state of Georgia, notably in Tennessee, a rival of the University of Georgia.
- The Democratic Party of Georgia is hoping to find out more about Dooley’s time outside the state, even purchasing the website derekdooley.com and asking people to submit stories about the coach.
- The website was paired with a billboard — down the street from the University of Tennessee.
- “Failed. Fired. Loser.” the billboard reads. “Derek Dooley sucked. Tell us about it.”
- USA Today reached out to the Dooley campaign for a comment on the ad and has not received a response.