COLUMBIA, MO. • When he took over as the football coach at Louisiana Tech more than a decade ago, Derek Dooley came equipped with bloodlines and a blueprint. The son of a coaching legend from an earlier generation, Dooley had spent the last seven years schooled under the game’s preeminent coach.
“There was no money,” Dooley said. “It was literally like a time warp to the 1970s, to the point where I had a panic attack. I took the job sight unseen. When I got there I told my wife, ‘I just ruined my career.’”
Over the next two years, Dooley not only guided a lifeless program back to the postseason but served as his own boss, remodeled a wreckage of an athletics department and parlayed his success into a job opportunity he couldn’t resist.