Josh Heupel hopes for a quiet audience in Oklahoma out of respect
Josh Heupel led Oklahoma to the 2000 national title as the Heisman quarterback. He joked that he hoped OU fans would stay quiet for him.
Tennessee Volunteers football coach Josh Heupel returns to his alma mater on Saturday when the Vols face Oklahoma in their SEC opener, but the former Heisman Trophy runner-up doesn’t have all fond memories.
Despite leading the Sooners to their most recent national championship victory in 2000 and finishing second to Florida State quarterback Chris Weinke in the Heisman Awards, Heupel was fired as Oklahoma’s offensive coordinator after the 2014 season, despite having served as an assistant for the program for over 10 years.
REQUIRED READING: Why Josh Heupel was fired as a scapegoat for Oklahoma football before he found success in Tennessee
Heupel revived his career after his firing, serving as offensive coordinator at Utah State in 2015 before playing for Missouri from 2016 to 2017. He was then named head coach at UCF from 2018 to 2020 before taking the job at Tennessee in 2021.
Heupel, of course, was successful at Tennessee, leading the program to an 11-2 mark in his second season in 2022 and leading the Vols to an Orange Bowl victory over Clemson and a road win over Alabama during the regular season.
Here is an explanation of why Heupel was fired from his alma mater after the 2014 season:
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Why was Josh Heupel fired?
There are many possible reasons why Heupel was fired after the 2014 season, but the root of the problem lies in Oklahoma’s struggles in 2014, a year in which the Sooners finished 8-5, the team’s worst finish since Stoops’ inaugural season in 1999.
Oklahoma finished the year with a 40-6 loss to Clemson, whose third-year defensive coordinator Brent Venables previously led Stoops’ defense for more than a decade at OU. The offense struggled against Venables’ team, gaining just 275 yards and having five turnovers in the loss.
Apparently the defense wasn’t much better under Mike Stoops, Stoops’ brother, who stayed with the team after the 2014 season.
However, this was not the case with Heupel and co-offensive coordinator Jay Norvell.
Some have suggested that Heupel, who called the plays, was used as a scapegoat for the disappointing season. Others have said that Stoops would never fire his brother, who struggled to build a solid defense at Oklahoma for several seasons but was not fired until 2018 when Lincoln Riley took over as head coach for Stoops.
Stoops’ postgame comments could not be traced back to his offseason conduct on the matter.
“I take responsibility for everything,” Stoops said in 2015. “That doesn’t mean (Heupel and Norvell) are responsible for the way the season went. They are definitely not scapegoats.”
Heupel’s offense ranked 20th nationally in scoring in 2014, averaging 36.4 points per game, while Mike’s defense ranked 55th, allowing 25.4 points per game.
It also appeared that Heupel and Stoops had different views on how to run an offense, as Heupel said on the ESPN podcast “Always College Football” in 2022.
“(I) moved away from (the up-tempo offense) (in the final stages of my tenure at Oklahoma) because that’s what the head coach wanted from a philosophical point of view,” Heupel said.
Heupel’s tempo-based spread offense has made him one of the most successful playmakers in college football since leaving Oklahoma. His offense is also led by Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby, who was Oklahoma’s offensive coordinator from 2022-2023.
Heupel was grateful for his firing at Oklahoma later in his career, as it helped him rebuild his coaching career. As a first-year head coach at UCF, Heupel had an undefeated record at one point and even said “thank God it happened” when referring to the firing.
“It worked out great for me,” he told the Orlando Sentinel in 2018. “If I had stayed there, I wouldn’t be here.”
Cale Gundy, a longtime Oklahoma offensive assistant and brother of Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy, recalled Stoops’ decision to fire Heupel to ESPN on Wednesday.
“Bob had to make a change,” Gundy recalled. “I don’t know, it was tough. … It wasn’t just problems on offense. But Bob had to make that decision. An incredibly tough decision.”
Heupel was replaced in 2015 by Lincoln Riley, who produced some of the best offenses in college football history at Oklahoma. He mentored two Heisman Trophy winners, Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray, and another runner-up, Jalen Hurts. Riley also recruited Caleb Williams to Oklahoma, who went on to win the Heisman at USC when Riley took the job in Los Angeles.
Josh Heupel college stats
Heupel was brought to Oklahoma before the 1999 season after spending the 1998 year at Snow College, a junior college in Ephraim, Utah.
Current Sooners coach Brent Venables, who was part of Stoops’ first Oklahoma team, told a story about Heupel’s recruiting process in his press conference before the Tennessee game on Tuesday.
Venables said he and Mike were actually interested in Akili Smith, a first-round draft pick out of Oregon, but it was offensive coordinator Mike Leach, one of the smartest offensive minds in the sport, who had his eye on Heupel.
“We were only here a couple of days and we were at Kansas State and we knew (Smith),” Venables said. “But (Leach) was recruiting California and Akili was coming from some junior college, Mount SAC or something… I can’t even remember how big he was, but he was a big, strong, burly guy who could turn it around. He looked the part, could run, could pass.”
Venables added:
“I say that with incredible respect and appreciation for Josh. (I) couldn’t have been more wrong. Don’t judge a book by its cover. (But) he was thin and just frail, and it was the middle of winter. Just a little pale, and the ball came out — he was a left-hander, probably hadn’t played in a couple of months — and the ball was wobbly. And Josh could do that occasionally, and we thought, ‘That’s not it.’ Mike Leach didn’t want to bring Akili Smith to visit. ‘Nah, not interested.'”
Heupel led Oklahoma to a national championship and finished runner-up for the Heisman Trophy behind Chris Weinke in 2000. He was later selected in the sixth round of the 2001 NFL Draft.
Here are his college stats by year:
- 1999: 310 of 500 passes (62%) for 3,460 yards with 30 touchdowns and 15 interceptions; 47 carries for -98 yards with five touchdowns.
- 2000: 280 of 433 passes (64.7%) for 3,392 yards with 20 touchdowns and 14 interceptions; 70 runs for 144 yards with seven touchdowns
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Heupel is 46 years old and was born on March 22, 1978, according to his biography from Tennessee.
Josh Heupel’s coaching career
This is how Heupel’s coaching career began, including his path to Tennessee:
- 2003-04: Research Assistant, Oklahoma
- 2005: Tight Ends, Arizona
- 2006-10: Quarterbacks, Oklahoma
- 2011-14: Co-offensive coordinator/quarterbacks, Oklahoma
- 2015: Assistant Coach/Offensive Coordinator/Quarterbacks, Utah State
- 2016-17: Offensive Coordinator/Quarterbacks, Missouri
- 2018-21: Head Coach, UCF
- 2021-today: Head Coach, Tennessee
