This academic year is quickly drawing to a close, which means football season is just around the corner.
This week Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek will host opportunities for faculty, staff and students to meet UT’s new head football coach, Derek Dooley. Faculty are invited from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 28, in the football practice facility in Neyland-Thompson Sports Center at the corner of Lake Loudoun Boulevard and Johnny Majors Drive. Staff and students may meet the coach from 4 to 5 p.m. Attendees should enter the facility through the football museum on Johnny Majors Drive. Refreshments will be served while supplies last.
To RSVP for the event, e-mail bgladden@utk.edu.
Dooley was introduced as Tennessee’s 22nd head football coach on Jan. 15 after serving three seasons as the head coach at Louisiana Tech University, where he also served as athletics director since March 2008. He was the only athletics director also serving as head football coach on the major college level.
Before entering the world of collegiate coaching, Dooley earned his bachelor’s degree in government and foreign affairs from Virginia in 1990, and his law degree from the University of Georgia in 1994. He practiced law at a private law firm in Atlanta for two years before making the move to college football as a graduate assistant at the University of Georgia.
Son of former Georgia coaching legend Vince Dooley, he was a walk-on wide receiver at the University of Virginia before earning a scholarship after his second season and leading the Cavaliers to three bowl appearances and the 1989 ACC championship.
Dooley’s college football career has taken him to Southern Methodist University, Louisiana State University and Louisiana Tech. He also spent two years coaching in the National Football League as tight ends coach for the Miami Dolphins.
To read more about Dooley, click here.