Longtime friends Jeff Lebby and Josh Heupel meet for first time as head coaches

20 years ago, Josh Heupel and Jeff Lebby might not have been able to predict where they would be in 2024.

Lebby had aspirations of being a college football player at the University of Oklahoma before an injury ended his career and coaching was his next step. A young Lebby started out as a student assistant for the Sooners as he went through college in Norman and former Oklahoma QB and Sooner legend Josh Heupel joined the staff as a Graduate Assistant during Lebby’s time.

The two came up together in a small office inside the operations building working on a gameplan for head coach Bob Stoops. 20 years later, they’re game planning to beat each other on Saturday as head coaches inside the SEC.

“A guy that I have more respect for than maybe anybody in the profession. A great friend and somebody that has been a great mentor to me,” Lebby said of Heupel. “I had the opportunity to work for him and it was an incredible experience. A guy that’s incredibly consistent and you look at what he’s done, the amount of success he’s had, the culture he’s created at an incredible place. A ton of respect for who he is as a person, as a father, as a husband and then obviously as a football coach, as well.”

Lebby drawing on Heupel’s success to set picture for program building

Heupel and Lebby have both made the same kind of trek to get to where they want to be. The Tennessee head coach spent 15 seasons working his way up from GA to position coach and then offensive coordinator before getting his break at Central Florida in 2018 as the head coach.

It took Lebby 10 years to go from that SA job with the Sooners to coaching a position in college when he was the running backs coach for Baylor. Nearly 10 years later, he’s a head coach in the league.

Along the way, one of his stops was with Heupel. The coach hired Lebby as his quarterback coach when he was hired at USF and Lebby was the OC by the next season. It was a springboard for the Lebby’s career and an opportunity to see how a successful program can be built.

“Seeing a great deal of consistency and him being exactly who he is supposed to be as a leader. Those players inside the building and his staff, they know what to expect every single day,” Lebby said. “Results won’t dictate who he is as a person and how he interacts. There’s a lot of that, that you hear me talking about non-stop every single day as we’re fighting to build this.”

Heupel has revived a national brand from title irrelevance over the last two decades back to a contender. He inherited a three-win team and took them to 7-6 his first year before delivering the first 10-win season since 2007 two seasons ago.

After finishing 9-4 last year, Tennessee is already 7-1 and 4-1 in the SEC and has a shot at making it to the SEC Championship and the College Football Playoff. The Volunteers are dangerous on both sides of the football and have a homefield advantage that is among the best in the country.

It makes Saturday all the more tough for Lebby and his State team as it enters 2-7 and 0-5 in league play.

“The challenge this Saturday is a challenge of its own. I do think living some of the experiences we’ve lived throughout the season helps us understand what it’s going to be like,” Lebby said. “Again for us, so many young guys playing, especially on the offensive side of the ball. But our guys understanding the crowd noise and the environment, that part of it and creating strain and stress, we’ve done a better job. I thought we did better at Georgia than we did the week before at Austin (Texas).

We need to be able to carry that growth over because again, the setting, the environment, night game, it will be an electric atmosphere. We’ve got to do a great job of communicating and finding ways to take that out of the game.”