ESPN ranks Tennessee's Josh Heupel as third best former player turned head coach
Josh Heupel is the third-best former college football player turned college football head coach, according to ESPN. The Tennessee Football coach was ranked this week behind only Colorado coach Deion Sanders and Bowling Green coach Eddie George, respectively.
Heupel in two seasons at Oklahoma passed for 6,852 yards and 50 touchdowns, including 3,392 yards and 20 touchdowns while leading the Sooners to the national championship in 2000.
“Heupel grew up in South Dakota and was the state’s player of the year in high school,” ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg wrote. “But without a clear path to start for a major college program, he first went to Weber State, where he went through an ACL injury and appeared in only four games before transferring within the state to Snow College. Heupel earned junior college All-America honors there before transferring to Oklahoma.”
Josh Heupel is 37-15 in four seasons as Tennessee’s head coach
The Sooners went 7-5 in 1999 with Heupel at the helm, then a perfect 13-0 in 2000, capped with a 13-2 win over Florida State in the BCS National Championship game.
“He immediately made his presence known in 1999 with 3,850 passing yards and 33 touchdowns,” Rittenberg wrote. “Heupel then led the Sooners to a national title in 2000, recording 3,606 passing yards and 20 touchdowns.
“He was named AP Player of the Year, won the Walter Camp Award and consensus All-America honors, and was runner-up for the Heisman Trophy. A sixth-round NFL draft pick in 2001, Heupel didn’t see time in the pros.”
Heupel is 37-15 in four seasons as Tennessee’s head coach, including a 20-12 record in SEC games. He led the Vols to the College Football Playoff last season, where they lost in the first round at Ohio State in the first year of the 12-team playoff era.
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Tennessee has won 10 or more games twice under Heupel, finishing 10-3 last season and going 11-2 in 2022, including a win over Clemson in the Orange Bowl in the program’s first New Years Six bowl appearance during the College Football Playoff era.
‘Josh Heupel arrived and pulled the Vols out of peril’
Heupel was ranked 17th in USA Today’s top 25 college football coaches earlier this month. That list was also topped by Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Ohio State’s Ryan Day and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney.
He was unranked and received just three votes in ESPN’s ranking of the top 10 coaches in college football. ESPN’s college football reporters voted in the poll that was also topped by Smart, Day and Swinney.
“If Tennessee didn’t hit rock bottom after firing Jeremy Pruitt amid an NCAA investigation,” USA Today wrote of Heupel in its rankings, “it at least could reach down and touch the bottom. Then Josh Heupel arrived and pulled the Vols out of peril.
“He’s beaten Alabama twice. He jolted Tennessee’s offense to life with his warp-speed system. In a sign of coaching growth, he made the playoff by building a good defense. He’s a coach with a high floor, even if he might be nearing his ceiling.”
