Derek Dooley on his relative inaccessibility since being hired as Tennessee’s newest football coach: “I’m here to represent the program, not sit up here and talk (to the media) all the time.”

Ouch. That’s going to go over about as well as beer at a baptizing with the writers on the UT sports beat.

That comment came at yesterday’s Spring Media Day on the UT campus, which also featured this exchange between Dooley and Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Dave Hooker.

I’m going to repeat something I said several weeks ago: Derek Dooley’s interaction with the media and the accessibility (or lack thereof) of his program makes it easy to see that he is a Nick Saban protege. Having spent several years as an assistant under Saban at LSU and the Miami Dolphins, we knew that Dooley would bring a lot of Saban’s philosophies for interacting with the media and fans to Knoxville. And in the first couple of months on the job, he’s done exactly that.

Saban makes it pretty clear that his job is to win games. To hell with the press. And Dooley will do the same thing in Knoxville. The press will tie themselves into knots over it—I think it is a lousy way of doing business myself, but no one asked me—but whether the fans care or not depends on whether Dooley wins games.

In Tuscaloosa, they couldn’t care less that Saban plays hardball with the media. They’re ready to deify him. Winning a national championship will do that for you. The same will hold true in Knoxville.