Former Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley lost the Georgia Senate Republican nomination to House Representative Mike Collins on June 16.
Dooley was beaten by Collins in a runoff after the initial primary race on May 19 concluded with neither candidate receiving a majority of the votes.
Dooley announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in August 2025. He was endorsed by exiting Gov. Brian Kemp, while President Donald Trump backed Collins.
“I don’t know Derek Dooley, and neither does anyone else, but he seems like a nice person,” Trump said about Dooley while endorsing Collins. “Unfortunately, he has lived outside of Georgia for most of his life …”
The former Tennessee football coach earned a law degree from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1994 and is the son of Vince Dooley, the the winningest coach in Georgia Bulldogs history with 201 victories.
The Vols went 15-21 with Dooley at the helm between 2010-12. He bounced between the NFL and college in the years after Tennessee. Dooley became the Dallas Cowboys’ wide receivers coach in 2013, jumped to Missouri as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2018.
He moved back to the NFL with the New York Giants in 2020, and then became a senior offensive analyst under Nick Saban at Alabama from 2022-23.
Wynton Jackson covers high school sports for Knox News. Email: wynton.jackson@knoxnews.com
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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Former Tennessee coach Derek Dooley loses GOP US Senate nomination in Georgia
