How Josh Heupel getting canned at his alma mater Oklahoma was best-case scenario

So much has happened in the last decade. Josh Heupel was an ascending star in the coaching profession, serving as the offensive coordinator for his former college coach Bob Stoops at his alma mater of Oklahoma. This is a team Heupel won a national championship at quarterback for, finishing as runner-up for the Heisman Trophy. Now a decade since he was let go by Stoops, Heupel is back!

After retiring as a player in the early 2000s, Heupel would go on to work for two of The Stoopses in Bob at Oklahoma and his brother Mike in Arizona. Heupel would work his way up from graduate assistant, to tight ends coach, to quarterbacks coach, to offensive coordinator by the early 2010s. Unfortunately, Stoops opted to make a big change at offensive coordinator after the 2014 season...

Heupel's contract with OU was not renewed, and in came a hotshot coordinator from East Carolina by the name of Lincoln Riley. In three years, Riley succeeded Stoops at Oklahoma, while Heupel was in the midst of reinventing himself as an offensive coordinator. After one year at Utah State and two years at Missouri, he was named the next head coach at UCF in 2018. In 2021, he left for Tennessee.

Flash forward to this season, and Tennessee stands to be a massive road favorite over Oklahoma.

You have to appreciate the climb and the reinvention Heupel has made since being let go at OU.

Josh Heupel has totally reinvented himself since being out at Oklahoma

I have to be totally honest here. It has to pain Heupel for it to have not worked out during his run as Oklahoma's offensive coordinator. I am sure he loves that place, but it just was not meant to be. In the years since, Heupel has adopted a variation of the Air Raid attack, one that has put up a ton of points in CoMo, Orlando and now in Knoxville. Now he leads this serious College Football Playoff contender.

While I am sure the coaching acumen and the passion for college football has always been there, Heupel may have needed to find that extra edge to be the coach Stoops always knew he could be. So much has changed since the end of that 2014 season. Stoops has "retired". Players have come and gone. All that remains in Norman is a great football legacy and its athletic director Joe Castiglione.

With Tennessee expected to win on the road, and win decidedly, it would be quite the story for Heupel to beat his alma mater in their place in the Sooners' first game in SEC play. It would be a coronation, albeit a cathartic one for Heupel. His team is arriving as we speaking, but it remains to be seen if Tennessee has the upward trajectory to get past Alabama, Georgia and Texas in the SEC this season.

For now, it all starts with yet another statement win, this time coming in a place Heupel knows so well.