Derek Dooley brings an orange ceramic dog to Tennessee practice.

Derek Dooley's madness knows no ends.

It time to add another icon to the growing carnival of the absurd that is the Derek Dookey era at Tennessee. This time, His Hairness has added an orange-colored ceramic dog that Tennessee equipment manager Roger Frazier discovered in Sweden. Apparently a live bluetick coonhound and a cosplaying counterpart weren't enough canine representatives for His Hairness. Dooley means for it to be a symbol of positive thinking for his struggling team.

"The significance of the dog went back to a metaphor Dooley provided the Vols (4-6, 0-6 SEC) with on Sunday, one day after their worst loss of the season, a 49-7 rout at Arkansas. Along with throwing out the Arkansas film, Dooley told the players to feed the "orange dog," which symbolizes positive thinking, and not the "red dog," which symbolizes negative thinking.

"We get so emotionally invested in the results in our country that it can really sabotage your thinking," Dooley said Monday. "It can sabotage your performance, and it has our team. I don't think there's any question, those teams that you say, 'We just didn't get the breaks and we were close.'

"You're missing that juice, that confidence and every day you wake up, you've got one side that wants to be negative and wants to feel sorry for yourself and wants to make excuses and blame others. Then you've got another side who thinks good thoughts and has a lot of encouragement, is a little more solution-oriented and isn't so emotionally drawn to the results. That's the side we need to feed ourselves with, and that's hard to do, it's hard for all of us."

The fact that red is a team color of many of Tennessee's rivals (Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, etc.) that the Vols' have fallen to this season is probably not coincidence. The idea does sound hauntingly familiar to Gerogia head football coach Mark Richt's talk of 'the energy bus" and "energy vampires" from before the start of the season.

The orange ceramic dog joins Derek Dooley's hair, his hat, his orange pants, and his mother as symbols of what has already become a surreal era of Tennessee football history. Oh, and don't forget that hideous tat on Tyler Bray's back. No matter what the win-loss records eventually comes out too. Dooley's time in Knoxville will soon not be forgotten.

(via The Knoxville News Sentinel)