Derek Dooley gained a unique distinction last February when settling into his new job. By landing in Tuscaloosa, Dooley became the third former Tennessee coach to join a Nick Saban staff at Alabama, completing the string from Lane Kiffin to Butch Jones.

Like Jones, Dooley’s role wouldn’t be as public as Kiffin’s three-year run as offensive coordinator (2014-16). This son of a coaching legend would be an analyst who worked behind the scene. After making an inflation-adjusted $2.5 million a year leading the Vols from 2010-12, Dooley pulled in $13,000 a month at Alabama as an analyst in the latest example of coaching career rehab.

Dooley was in Birmingham on Tuesday night to accept the Nick Saban Legacy Award on behalf of his father, Vince Dooley, who passed away last year. The elder Dooley was a legendary coach and athletics director at Georgia who won the 1980 national title. His son, after briefly practicing law, joined the coaching profession in the late 1990s and quickly met another great who helped shape his career.

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Speaking to reporters for a few minutes before the Tuesday ceremony, Derek Dooley spoke about his second stint working under Saban. This was a relationship that went back to Saban’s first staff at LSU when he hired the younger Dooley from SMU to be his tight ends coach.

“I sorta owe just about everything to Coach Saban as far as my career because he really taught me what it meant to be a football coach,” Derek Dooley said Tuesday in Birmingham. “I was with him for seven years at a very impressionable time so it was great for me.”

Derek Dooley was with Saban from 2000-04 at LSU and then coach tight ends under him with the Miami Dolphins from 2005-06. Louisiana Tech then came calling with a head coaching offer that eventually led him to Tennessee in 2010. He was fired before the final game of the 2012 season after compiling a 15-21 record, winning four SEC games in that three-year span.

After four years with the Cowboys, two as Missouri’s offensive coordinator and then one season as a New York Giants assistant, he returned to work for Saban. He echoed one of his dad’s favorite quotes often attributed to Michelangelo about always continuing to learn.

“It was just really refreshing to me to get back to my roots and remind me what it takes to win and build a team hasn’t changed,” Derek Dooley said Tuesday. “You’re always looking for new ways to do things and certainly there are things in football you need to adapt and adjust to but ultimately the foundation of the program doesn’t change and what it’s built on. There’s not much difference from Alabama today as it was at LSU when we got there 20-something years ago.”

Vince Dooley and former Kansas State coach Bill Snyder were honored at the second annual the Saban Legacy Award ceremony after Steve Spurrier, Archie Manning and Eddie Robinson were the 2022 honorees.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.