Looking back at Josh Heupel's Oklahoma firing 10 years later

Josh Heupel’s last game with Oklahoma’s ‘OU’ logo on his chest was a 40-6 loss to Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl two days before New Year’s in 2014. It was a frustrating end to a frustrating 8-5 season for the Sooners, which included five losses over their final nine games. 

There was a difference of opinion on offensive style, with head coach Bob Stoops wanting one thing and Heupel and Jay Norvell, his co-offensive coordinators, wanting something else.

A week later, Stoops said at a press conference that Heupel wouldn’t be back.

The All-American transfer quarterback and Heisman Trophy runner-up, the player that led Oklahoma to an improbable 13-0 season in 2000 and the only national championship of Stoops’ career, was out the door. 

“In those last two years at Oklahoma,” Heupel told the Orlando Sentinel in 2018, “we changed for two reasons. No. 1, because of the philosophy of the head coach and what he wanted to do. And No. 2, because of injuries. We played five quarterbacks in those last two years because of injuries.”

Heupel, after what had to have been the two longest years of his professional career, had to start from scratch after being fired by his old coach at his alma mater. 

Up Next: No. 6 Tennessee at No. 15 Oklahoma

Now, 10 years and four coaching stops later, Heupel is going back to Oklahoma Memorial Stadium as the head coach of No. 6 Tennessee (3-0), which welcomes No. 15 Oklahoma (3-0) in to the SEC Saturday night (7:30 Eastern Time, ABC) as the Sooners make their debut in the league. 

Stoops started game week by posting a statement on social media, a blanket refusal of all the interview requests he had already got or would get leading up to Heupel’s homecoming.

What he was willing to say, though, is how important Heupel was to his program. 

After all, the skinny junior college transfer, a South Dakota native out of Utah’s Snow College, helped an Oklahoma program that had won just 12 games the previous three seasons go 7-5 in Year 1, then 13-0 in Year 2, winning a BCS national championship. 

“I’ve often said (Heupel) is the MVP of all my recruits,” Stoops wrote, “because he was the catalyst that (got) us started in ’99.”

Fifteen years later, that catalyst had bogged down under Stoops.

Oklahoma’s offense in 2014 ranked 21st in scoring offense, averaging 36.4 points per game. The Sooners were 55th on defense, giving up 25.9 points per game. But Stoops opted to stick with Mike Stoops, his defensive coordinator and younger brother. 

Stoops hired Lincoln Riley away from East Carolina to be his new offensive coordinator, replacing Heupel. Riley would later replace Stoops as head coach when Stoops retired in 2017.

Stoops led Oklahoma to 191 wins and had 12 seasons with 10 or more wins. He had five 11-win seasons and five 12-win seasons, but never matched the 13 wins, or the national title won, with Heupel at quarterback. 

Stoops wrote in his book, ‘No Excuses’, in 2019 that firing Heupel “was the worst day of my eighteen years as the head coach at OU.”

Heupel landed back in Utah for the 2015 season, stepping out of the Stoops coaching tree for the first time as Utah State’s assistant head coach, offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. 

He started his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Oklahoma in 2004, spent one season with Mike Stoops as Arizona’s tight ends coach, then returned to Norman to start a nine-year run, climbing the ladder to offensive coordinator, viewed as a possible Stoops replacement when the time came.  

Instead, Heupel went from one season at Utah State to entering the SEC at Missouri in 2016 as offensive coordinators and quarterbacks coach. He stayed at Mizzou for two seasons before getting his first shot as a head coach at Central Florida, bringing the explosive offensive numbers that had followed him every step of the way.

Josh Heupel in 2018: ‘I’m a better coach today because I left Oklahoma’

Heupel went 28-8 in three years at UCF, leaving in January 2021 when Tennessee and new athletics director Danny White came calling. 

Now he’s 30-12 in his fourth season with the Vols, taking the program to an unthinkable 11 wins and an Orange Bowl in 2022 and currently coaching his most complete Tennessee team, one that has outscored opponents 191-13 through three games.

What Heupel told the Orlando Sentinel in 2018, in his first season at UCF, sounds even more prophetic looking back. 

“It’s worked out great for me,” he said at the time. “If I had stayed (at Oklahoma), I wouldn’t be here.”

All it took was a change of scenery. And a shift to his own scheme. 

“I had been under one umbrella my entire coaching career,” Heupel told the Orlando Sentinel. “The opportunities I have had to go to other places after Oklahoma either confirmed things or opened my eyes to things I would want to do in my own program.

“I’m a better coach today because I left Oklahoma.”