Josh Heupel is coming home — sort of. The current Tennessee football coach and his Volunteers are on the road this week to face one of their newest SEC foes: Oklahoma, which Heupel knows very well considering he led the Sooners to their most recent national championship and was also later fired by the team as a coach.
While Heupel is a native of South Dakota and began college in Utah, Heupel spent 12 years in total in Norman, Oklahoma as either a player or coach for the Oklahoma football program. In January 2015, though, then-Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops dismissed Heupel, his former quarterback, from the offensive coordinator position he had occupied on his staff for four years.
Now, Heupel has a formidable Tennessee team heading back to his old stomping grounds to face his alma mater in a top-25 Southeastern Conference (SEC) matchup. And Sam Bradford, Heupel’s prized pupil who won the Heisman in 2008 under Heupel’s tutelage, said he wants his former coach to feel valued for his time in Oklahoma on Saturday.
“I hope enough time [has gone by] that he still understands how much he means to this state, how much he means to the program,” Bradford told ESPN’s Chris Low and Jake Trotter. “I hope that he gets a warm reception. I hope that he’s able to appreciate that and take that in before the game gets going.”
Josh Heupel, Tennessee to face Oklahoma in big SEC clash
© NATHAN J. FISH/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK
After a few years at lower levels of college football in Utah, Josh Heupel eventually found his way to Norman, Oklahoma, where he would become the starting quarterback of the Oklahoma Sooners, who had just hired Florida defensive coordinator Bob Stoops as head coach and a pass-happy offensive coordinator from Kentucky by the name of Mike Leach.
Heupel immediately became the starter for Oklahoma and one of the top passers in the entire country. In his first season, Heupel threw for a Big 12-best 3,460 yards and 30 touchdowns. The next year, with Leach off to Texas Tech, Heupel’s efficiency improved despite a dip in accumulative stats, earning Heisman Trophy finalist status. But more importantly, the senior quarterback led the Sooners to a perfect 13-0 season and a national championship victory, the first in 15 years and, to date, the most recent for the storied program.
A few years later, Heupel began his coaching career in Norman. After a year as an OU graduate assistant, Heupel went to Arizona to work under Mike Stoops, the former Sooners defensive coordinator and brother of then-Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops. One year later, Heupel found himself back in Oklahoma, where he worked his way up from quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator, a position he held until January 2015.
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Following a 40-6 shellacking by Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl to conclude an 8-5 season, however, Bob Stoops fired Heupel, who had spent 12 combined years with the program as a player or assistant coach. Heupel then spent one season with Utah State before becoming Missouri’s offensive coordinator, a position he held for two years.
Less than three years after his firing from Oklahoma, Heupel became the head coach of UCF, which he would lead to a 28-8 record over three seasons before being hired by Tennessee. Since taking over the Volunteers program, Heupel is 30-12 and has his current Tennessee team sitting at sixth in the country.
Coincidentally, Heupel and Tennessee will serve as Oklahoma’s first-ever SEC opponent this weekend. The No. 15 Sooners, led by third-year coach Brent Venables, enter SEC play with a 3-0 record albeit after two less-than-convincing performances against Houston and Tulane the last few weeks.
Saturday evening’s game will begin a tough welcoming party of sorts for Oklahoma, which visits Auburn next weekend and then will play vs. No. 1 Texas, South Carolina, and at No. 5 Ole Miss before the end of October.
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Publish date : 2024-09-18 03:30:00
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