Derek Dooley is currently an analyst on the Alabama staff, working under coach Nick Saban. That’s something he’s done a lot in his career.

Dooley was an assistant on Saban’s staff at LSU from 2000 to 2004 and also served as an offensive analyst on the Alabama staff this past season.

This week, Dooley was accepting an award on behalf of his late father, Vince Dooley, and spoke about what Nick Saban has meant to his career (via AL.com):

“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.”

Dooley added that the Saban method is always worth taking on as a refresher course:

“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.”

How long will Dooley remain in Tuscaloosa under Saban? We’ll see what the future holds for the former head coach and ex-NFL assistant.