After being canned as the head coach at the University of Tennessee, Derek Dooley was ready to walk away from football for awhile. Instead, he’s found himself a new job as the wide receivers coach for the Dallas Cowboys, and he’ll continue getting paychecks from the Vols as he settles into the new position.
According to the Dallas Morning News, Dooley was bought out by Tennessee to the tune of $5 million, which will be doled out over the next four years.
“In December, I really wasn’t looking for any opportunity,” Dooley said last week, per the Morning News. “There’s an element when you go through [being fired], you don’t have a manual for it. It’s the first time in your career, what do you do? I felt like the first thing I needed to do was get right, get myself right. Because there’s a lot of emotions that go through when you don’t have the success that you wanted to have and it ends quicker than you expect. Really the month of December, that’s what I was doing.
“In January, I wasn’t really looking for anything. Quite frankly, this opportunity was one that really excited me and I couldn’t turn down, because not only the amount of respect I have in Coach [Jason] Garrett, but also it’s the Dallas Cowboys, and I’ve got a great amount of respect for the Jones family and belief in what they’re doing, and I was just real excited to be a part of it.”
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