Worst Coach In University of Tennessee Football History Releases Campaign Ad for US Senate In State Allergic to Orange
I don’t know why Vince Dooley’s kid is running for Senate. I especially don’t understand why he would release such a god-awful ad. I mean, at least he has the Braves A behind him. If it were up to one of his backers, a particularly boisterous Alabama fan that I think has blocked all of the contributors at Peach Pundit, that A would have had a mullet.
Honestly, though, in this cycle for the Senate, it’s a bottom-of-the-barrel kind of race. You’ve got Derek Dooley, who was the worst coach in Tennessee Football history, going back to 1906. He’s riding on his dad’s name, an absolute Legend that lost more games as head coach (77) than Derek even coached (73). And for some reason, Gov. Kemp is backing him. Which is really the only reason, if you squint, he looks competitive.
The whole ad is about how in college football, you are held accountable by the film. Novel approach for a guy who’s never run for public office before and, consequently, has no public opinions or “film” to be held accountable with. And the film we do have on him, like his 44% win percentage as a head coach, that makes my first semester calculus grade look fantastic by comparison (I majored in politics cause I was told there would be no math, and then the Navy made me take two semesters of calculus). Hell, even Ray Goff had a win percentage better than .500.
I played around with some AI (Perplexity Pro using research mode, seriously, this is my new favorite intern) and here’s the verdict. Full query here. Note, I’m not sure why the data set is missing a game but the difference between .444 and .438 is negligible.
The Verdict:
Derek Dooley was objectively a poor head coach by FBS standards, particularly at the SEC level. His .444 career winning percentage and .417 mark at Tennessee place him in roughly the bottom 15-20% of FBS head coaches who had meaningful tenures (3+ years).
What made it particularly notable: He coached at Tennessee, an historically elite program with high expectations. His SEC conference record of 4-19 (.174) was disastrous. He was fired mid-November 2012 and didn’t even coach the final game. Multiple sources describe him as having “failed” at Tennessee.
So yes, by win percentage standards, Derek Dooley was a demonstrably bad college football head coach, especially when measured against SEC competition and Tennessee’s historical standards.
Meanwhile, he’s running against Mike Collins (son of Mac Collins), who tried to cosplay as Jean Claude Van Damme (original ad, and Mike’s version) in his first run for congress, where he lost to the guy who said Islam doesn’t count under the First Amendment and women should get permission from their husbands before running for office (and presumably before voting). You all know my opinions of Jody Hice. In the before times, I took every chance I could to tee off on the guy. And Hice replaced Paul Broun, who said “evolution was a lie from the pit of hell.” Even Medical doctors are scientifically illiterate sometimes. And I say that having had a warning sticker in my Cobb County public school physics textbook about the dangers of evolution. They were in the biology textbooks, too, but I was a senior when Cobb mandated the stickers. My girlfriend at the time had it in her biology book, though.
Then there’s Red White and Blue Land guy, and no, Buddy Carter isn’t talking about bringing the Thrashers back to Atlanta. Although the weather over the last couple of days certainly feels like Winnipeg came to Atlanta. I’ma need that cold and ice to leave like the disruptive guest at a Waffle House when the line cook gets involved. Personally, I kinda miss “snatch a knot in their ass” Buddy Carter, but frankly, there are 535 members that could use a knot snatched at this point. It’s not just the Senate.
Finally, there’s Snuggles. Vernon Jones, the former Democrat, now turned MAGA boot licker. Admittedly, I have seen more Vernon Jones signs (all on my run to the UPS Store on Monday) than Buddy Carter signs, so I guess he’s got that going for him.
I realize I went full no-party ID independent after the 2019 convention cycle, but is this really the best the GAGOP has to offer?
AI DIsclosure: AI was used in this post. Perplexity pro was used for gathering coaching statistics for NCAA football coaches and analysis. The full query was linked in the article for anyone wishing to veryify things. Dall-E through Chat GPT was used to create the featured image.
