Dooley, TMZ and the SEC

Derek Dooley was a hit on the final day of the SEC Media Days.

Tennessee's head coach arrived under a barrage of television cameras and bright lights, forcing him to comment to an SEC aid "Is TMZ here?" 

The celebrity gossip television network wasn't in the building, but that didn't kill the buzz.

A day after Vanderbilt's Robbie Caldwell left the media room in stitches with his down-home humor, Dooley stepped in with a polished and confident approach-- hitting the key issues his team and his program faces.

Dooley wasn't going to be dragged into negative comments about his predecessor, Lane Kiffin.

After repeated questions on Kiffin, Dooley finally said:

I didn't evauluate the job Lane did, so I don't know. All I know is I got to Tennessee, Here's the situation, Here's the roster, How do we move forward? So I didn't have time to analyze all the decisions that the prior coaching staffs made. I don't know any other way to say it, you know.

On the status of players arrested on July 9, Dooley said:

"Nothing since that time has come out that's been any different or anything inconsistent with what every single player has told me. In fact, any doubt that I had that day when I was talking to 'em has all been removed since that time, especially as the investigation continues.

On why arrested player Da'Rick Rogers is still a member of the team:

I treated the Da'Rick situation no different that how I treated Marlon Walls and how I treated Greg King and how I treated some of the other guys. I made a decision of how they handled it, the judgment they used, and then we made decisions internally based on that. Unless anything else comes out, that's the course we're taking."

Dooley says he's all about changing Tennessee's image, but he offered no guarantees that future trouble won't happen. His concern, said the attorney-turned-coach, is to make sure Tennessee works harder to prevent problems like the one that made national news on July 9.

And if it works, Dooley won't have to worry about TMZ showing up around Tennessee football, ever.