When you talk with Derek Dooley, there are a few early impressions. The first is that drawl. The guy sounds like a football coach. More important, he sounds like an SEC football coach. That’s a big deal these days at the University of Tennessee.

It’s also easy to pick up a sense of purpose in his voice. This is a man with a clear idea of where to go and how to get there. He doesn’t yell that often, because he doesn’t need to. But when he does, people notice.

Wednesday, April 7: Afternoon practice. It’s the first time the Vols have had back-to-back days in pads, and the quality of play is suffering. Dooley stops drills and delivers a high-decibel message to the team. Pick it up, people!

“We knew he was serious, because he never yells,” senior defensive end Chris Walker says. “He challenged us. He wanted us to push through.”

Tennessee football has to overcome a lot more than practice fatigue. During the past two seasons, the Vols have gone from perennial SEC contender — albeit usually in Florida’s shadow — to a program characterized by shoddy play on the field and extracurricular behavior that ranged from the bizarre to the criminal. Lane Kiffin’s one-season tenure was a definite low point and was characterized by a kind of false hubris that didn’t really belong in Knoxville. Motivating his players to push on during a workout may be part of Dooley’s overall mission, but his biggest challenge is to build the kind of trust that has been missing at Tennessee, the better to ensure future success.

To his credit, Dooley didn’t come to town asking for that trust immediately. He understands that it must be earned, especially for those who are playing for their third coach in 18 months. “He knows we’ve been burned,” Walker says. Burned indeed. UT removed long-time coach Phillip Fulmer after the 2008 season (his ouster was announced in early November), the end of a long, slow decline in the program’s fortunes. Kiffin lasted less than a year, although his mouth did provide some comic relief. If Dooley thinks he can just put on an orange tie at his introductory press conference and expect absolute loyalty and faith from anyone in the UT community, he’s crazy.

Derek Dooley is not crazy.

“At the very first team meeting, I told the players, ‘I would never ask you to trust me. That has to be earned over time,’” Dooley says. “I’m not here to do a sales job in one week.”

For many in Tennessee, a quick sell from Dooley would have been as popular as an Urban Meyer run for governor in the Volunteer State. First off, he wasn’t exactly the first choice, at least if you believed the reports from the coaching caravan. Will Muschamp and Troy Calhoun both issued statements they weren’t interested. So did former UT offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe. Dooley, who had done a solid job during three years at Louisiana Tech, leading the Bulldogs to a bowl victory in 2008 but posting just a 4–8 record in ’09, was hardly considered a hot prospect.

But Dooley had a lot going for him. The first thing was his SEC pedigree. His father, Vince, was the winningest coach in the SEC during his tenure at Georgia. Derek Dooley spent time at Georgia as a graduate assistant and was on Nick Saban’s staff at LSU for five years. That may not be Rocky Top, but it’s hard to dispute him when he says he understands the conference. “He knows the passion of SEC football and the fans and the quality of players,” says senior linebacker LaMarcus Thompson. “Georgia and LSU are big programs like Tennessee and have history and tradition.”

It also doesn’t hurt that Dooley’s eight-year old son is named Peyton, a fact that should make him plenty of friends at school.

Unlike Kiffin, whose primary nod to the Volunteer legacy was big talk about taking down conference rivals, Dooley understands that to enter this job talking about reconstruction and drastic change would be deadly.

“When a new coach and staff come in, there is a bit of tension as everybody tries to figure everything out,” says Quin Harris, who played for Dooley at Louisiana Tech. “Everybody bought in real fast to him. He developed a real swagger for the program. It ­wasn’t a bunch of individuals. He gets people working as a unit.”

Harris characterizes Dooley as a “business football coach,” a nod to Dooley’s no-nonsense personality and his time spent as a trial lawyer. “You can tell he’s a lawyer,” Thompson says with a laugh. “He likes to talk.”

Dooley says he misses the courtroom, but not “writing down what I did for every tenth of an hour.” He is very specific in his goals and how they will be accomplished. He also brings tremendous discipline to a program that needs it. An avalanche of arrests and disciplinary action marred the end of Fulmer’s tenure. Last November, three UT players were arrested on suspicion of armed robbery.

“He knows things have happened off the field,” Walker says. “He knows nobody is perfect, but he wants us to do what’s right.”

Fans will no doubt applaud a clean police record and better grades, but Dooley will ultimately be judged on wins. Last year’s team finished 7–6 and was blown out by Virginia Tech in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. Dooley must re-tool the offensive line, find a quarterback who can produce and deal with some defections that will tax Tennessee’s depth and force the Vols to use a lot of young players. Those who expect immediate gratification had better brace themselves. This is not about 2010.

“I understand the expectation of winning,” Dooley says. “You can’t take this job without that. At some point, we’re going to get measured by our wins. But every decision I have made in the first three months of this job was not to win next season. It was to build a foundation to win in the future.”

Dooley expects to be around to see that success unfold. Tennessee is taking no chances. If Dooley leaves before February 2012, he owes the school $4 million. It drops to $3 million in 2013 and $1 million in ’14. When you have been burned, you take no chances. Judging by Dooley’s first few months on the job, Tennessee isn’t engaging in risky behavior. This son of the South knows his new program and understands what’s expected of him. Dooley is going to win at Tennessee. It just might take a little time.

And trust.

This feature appears in the 2010 Athlon Sports Southeastern magazine. Click here to purchase your copy.