
Southern announced Monday that former Prairie View A&M head coach Eric Dooley has agreed to become its next head football coach. The announcement came two days after Dooley led Prairie View in Saturday’s Southwestern Athletic Conference championship game.
Dooley, 56, is a New Orleans native and Southern alum and former assistant coach for the Jaguars. In his fourth season leading Prairie View, he won his first West Division title and lost Saturday to East Division champion Jackson State in front of crowd of over 50,000 in the SWAC title game, 27-10 (see Championship Game Recap).
With a reputation for building productive, high=scoring offenses, he compiled a 20-16 overall record at Prairie View with a 16-9 mark in SWAC play.
Dooley was introduced at Southern at noon Tuesday in a news con- ference at the A. W. Mumford Field House.
He replaces interim coach Jason Rollins, who took over in May when Dawson Odums resigned to take the head coaching job at Norfolk State. Rollins led the Jaguars to a 4-7 record this fall.
Dooley is a product of the Southern University system. He earned his undergraduate degree at SUNO in 1999 and his master’s degree from the Baton Rouge campus in 2005. He was a wide receiver at Grambling in the late 1980s.
He joined Pete Richardson’s staff at Southern in 1997 and stayed at Southern through 2010, working for 13 years under Richardson and one more under Stump Mitchell. Dooley was the wide receivers coach under both coaches and was with the Jaguars as they won four SWAC titles (1997-99, 2003) and two Black college national championships (’97, ’03) under Richardson.
“I’m excited for him,” Richardson told Baton Rouge radio station WAFB. “He’s an individual that paid his dues. I think this is an outstand- ing hire for Southern University.”
Dooley left Southern in 2011 to become offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Arkansas-Pine Bluff under Monte Coleman and was there in 2012 as the Golden Lions won their first outright SWAC championship since 1966.
Dooley then moved to Grambling, where as offensive coordinator, his unit averaged at least 31 points per game and ranked first or second in the SWAC in scoring each of his final three seasons.