You’ll hear a lot about Josh Heupel and the Sooners this week, all the way through the “College GameDay” live broadcast in Norman, Okla., and up until kickoff Saturday night between the Oklahoma program he helped resurrect as a player and the Tennessee program he’s trying to return to the top as its coach.
Here’s what you won’t hear: anyone outside of Heupel’s family saying Bob Stoops had no justification for firing Heupel as his offensive coordinator 10 years ago. Unfortunate, bad situation, brutal decision, both are special people: I’ve heard all that from more than a dozen people who lived the situation in some way. But no one will say definitively that Stoops was wrong.
Oklahoma quickly returned to 11-win football. Heupel took the humbling and reinvented himself as an offensive football coach. And Tennessee stands to be the big winner. That decision might end up on a short list of the best things to happen to the Vols since their 1998 team coached by Phillip Fulmer won it all.
It might. It looks that way. It’s heading in that direction. Those are necessary cautions entering No. 6 Tennessee (3-0) at No. 15 Oklahoma (3-0) in an early College Football Playoff clarifier. The loser obviously won’t be out of it, but the loser’s remaining schedule will look a lot worse as of late Saturday night.
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Even if Brent Venables’ Sooners take advantage of a rare opportunity for this program to pull off a home upset, the rest of Oklahoma’s road doesn’t convey delight. Texas, trips to Ole Miss and Missouri and a visit from Alabama remain. Considering all that and the underwhelming sight of Oklahoma’s offense and offensive line so far, the Sooners getting into the 12-team field (a 6 percent chance, per Austin Mock’s Playoff projection model) would be an upset.
Tennessee not in the 12 (a 58 percent chance, per Mock) also would be an upset. This game is more about Tennessee. It’s about Heupel, and yes, of course, we love soap operas in sports. Stoops firing him as co-offensive coordinator — along with co-OC Jay Norvell — after the 2014 season, 14 years after Heupel quarterbacked Stoops’ Sooners to the national title, is the “General Hospital” of 21st-century coaching transactions.
Josh Heupel has a 30-12 record in his fourth season at Tennessee. (Randy Sartin / Imagn Images)
But we still haven’t discovered what Heupel’s Tennessee team and program are, exactly, and that’s more pressing and relevant than the question of whether the retired Stoops should have fired his brother and failing defensive coordinator Mike Stoops instead.
The Vols look awesome right now. Also, they’ve charged full price — in the last season of ticket purchases without a “talent fee” tacked on! — for a pair of public skill exhibitions, outscoring Chattanooga and Kent State by a combined score of 140-3. Destroying NC State 51-10 in Charlotte opened eyes, especially to the waves of pros sharing snaps in a nasty front seven, but NC State looks more like a contender for last place in the ACC than first place.
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Nico Iamaleava has all the ingredients of a great quarterback. But he threw an ill-advised pick over the middle of the field in that NC State game and hasn’t seen any legitimate game pressure this season. The Vols have needed adrenaline for about 20 minutes of football.
They’re about to play an extremely talented opponent as the favorite, at night, in one of the game’s great settings. And if they lose, upcoming games against Alabama and Georgia become games that must be split.
Remember a year ago? I hope Billy Napier does because it was one of his few days that wasn’t torturous as Florida’s coach. A lot of these same Tennessee players and most of the coaches were supposed to win with ease over the Gators on the road at night and instead got trampled in a 29-16 loss.
It was one of Heupel’s few days that wasn’t impressive as Tennessee’s coach. He’s 30-12, 14-10 in the SEC, in his fourth season, which is no small thing after inheriting a hazardous waste site from Jeremy Pruitt. Heupel’s recruiting is red-hot, and his resources match any peer — Tennessee’s athletic department is one of nine members of the $200 million revenue club, checking in at $202.1 million in the 2022-23 fiscal year.
That’s eighth nationally, three spots ahead of Oklahoma’s $199.3 million. Things could go various ways for these programs, Saturday and beyond, but one way I wouldn’t expect it to go is Heupel leaving Tennessee to coach Oklahoma.
The question is whether he can take Tennessee as a coach where he took Oklahoma as a quarterback in 2000, with Stoops as coach and Venables as co-defensive coordinator.
A team with this offense, an iteration of the scheme Art Briles made famous at Baylor, has never won it all. Tennessee and Ole Miss this season appear to have the best shot at it since Briles’ Baylor team of 2014 — the same season that ended up being Heupel’s last in Norman.
After that season, Heupel embraced the philosophical shift and resumed his climb toward head coaching opportunities. Stoops hired Lincoln Riley to do a lot of the same stuff Heupel had wanted to do at Oklahoma and decided on Riley as his heir apparent. Riley fired Mike Stoops in 2018 and left for USC in 2021.
There’s no way to re-litigate the firing, although it will be heavily revisited this week. Of the people I interviewed two years ago for a story on it, the late, great Mike Leach summed it up best for everyone — “I never quite figured it out, you know?” he said — and put Heupel’s time in perspective. It was Leach, Stoops’ first OC, who found Heupel in junior college and put him in charge on the field for a stunning turnaround.
“I don’t think people fully realize how important Josh Heupel was to the University of Oklahoma,” Leach said. “I don’t think people realize how delicate the balance was, because if this goes into the hands of somebody who can’t get it done, obviously there’s no national championship, obviously Oklahoma doesn’t get out of the blocks very fast, and then, you know as these (administrators) get impatient, who knows how it evolves from there?
“He was critical. Probably bigger than he even realizes or thinks about.”
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Josh Heupel wants to do for Tennessee what he was supposed to do at Oklahoma.
This week, Stoops didn’t respond to a request for comment but did put out a statement saying he would be declining all interviews and all attention needed to be on Venables and Heupel. That was nice, other than the fact he spelled it “Huepel.”
Heupel had some fun with Oklahoma questions this week and cited Stoops, Leach, Venables and others when he said: “I wouldn’t be here today at Tennessee if I didn’t have all those experiences, so I’m tremendously grateful for all those people.”
It has worked out well since then. I’m guessing Saturday night, even the Sooners fans who were convinced Heupel couldn’t draw a crossing route on a napkin 10 years ago will join in a rousing ovation for him at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. I have no idea how the football will go.
But I would advise Venables and the Sooners of this if it goes the way many think it will go and Heupel is way up late in a triumphant return home: Watch for the onside kick.
(Top photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
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Publish date : 2024-09-17 22:00:00
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