If the Tennessee Vols leave Norman with a win on Saturday night (and that's a big if…winning in Norman at night is no easy task), Oklahoma Sooners fans will likely start to imagine a world where Josh Heupel comes home to lead his alma mater. 

Of course, that's only if Oklahoma flounders the rest of the reason and doesn't catch fire under head coach Brent Venables. 

A lackluster season for Oklahoma combined with a Heupel-led playoff appearance for the Vols would almost certainly have some folks in Sooners-land wondering what it would take to bring Heupel back to Norman. 

It's an unavoidable storyline for Heupel and the Vols in the event that Tennessee thrives and Oklahoma declines (to be clear, I'm not predicting that Venables will fail at OU….he's a great man and a great coach — I think he'll be just fine, but you never truly know how things will play out).

Tennessee fans obviously have some PTSD when it comes to a popular coach leaving Rocky Top to go "home". Lane Kiffin famously left Knoxville after just one season to take his dream job at USC. In retrospect, it's impossible to blame Kiffin for leaving for a job he always dreamed of having. But it left Vols fans with some wounds that are still healing 14 years later. 

Heupel is significantly more popular and more successful than Kiffin ever was at Tennessee. And he obviously has a deep connection to Oklahoma via his playing career and the 10 seasons he spent on a sideline there as an assistant coach. 

If Oklahoma comes calling one day, would Heupel actually leave Tennessee? 

Two big reasons why Tennessee Vols fans shouldn't worry about Josh Heupel leaving for Oklahoma

1. Josh Heupel's connection to Danny White

One of the reasons why Heupel has been able to execute his vision at Tennessee is because of his connection to athletic director Danny White. Heupel and White have been together since the 2018 season at UCF. Heupel trusts White. The two men are completely aligned when it comes to building a program, upgrading facilities, etc. They're also both incredibly competitive people who thrive on positive energy in a fast-paced college football world that is rapidly evolving. I don't think Heupel finds the same success at Tennessee (at least not as quickly) if White isn't the athletic director. "Alignment" is often used as a cliché buzz word by coaches and athletic directors, but it's truly one of the most important ingredients (if not the most important) to a successful athletic department. Combine the approach of Heupel and White with the resources and energy at Tennessee and you've got some magic. That's not something that can be repeated in just any environment. It's the reason why you see a coach thrive at one program and then struggle at another (Scott Frost from UCF to Nebraska and Billy Napier from Louisiana to Florida, for example).

Heupel understands all of this as well as anyone thanks to his two plus decades in the sport. And it's hard to see him giving that up or walking into an unknown situation with a new athletic director. 

It's also worth noting, as On3's Andy Staples pointed out this week, that White gave Heupel a chance when there wasn't much interest in the former Sooners quarterback as a head coach. And that chance came just a couple of years after Oklahoma kicked Heupel out of the house and slammed the door in his face. 

2. Josh Heupel's already been fired by his alma mater once, why would he go down that road again? 

The athletic director situation for Heupel will likely change at some point in his career. In a perfect orange-tinted world, Heupel and White retire together at Tennessee after decades of dominance and a few national championships. But while there's a path to that happening, it's probably unlikely. College athletics are so volatile these days that decades long stability is a concept that's almost extinct at this point. 

What's not extinct, though, is the pain that Heupel felt in early 2015 when he was told by his alma mater that he was no longer wanted/needed. Heupel was an Oklahoma guy through and through from 1999 to 2014. He looked like the heir apparent to Bob Stoops until Stoops fired him after a lackluster 8-5 season in 2014. 

Coaches who return to their alma mater rarely ride off into the sunset after a job well done. More often than not, it turns into an awkward situation where the coach hangs on for an extra year because no one wants to fire him — until the wheels fall off and the noise gets too loud. We saw it with Frost at Nebraska, who was fired after winning just 16 games in four-plus seasons. Even successful coaches, like Phillip Fulmer at Tennessee, can have an awkward breakup with their alma mater (Fulmer actually did it twice, as a coach and as the program's athletic director). Sometimes it works out, a la Kirby Smart at Georgia or Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State. But that's not the norm. The far more likely scenario is basically the David Shaw at Stanford experience — early success before running out of gas. 

I don't know why Heupel would even dream of putting himself in that situation again. There's no guarantee he would recreate the magic he's found at Tennessee. And given the current climate in college football (where there's not a lot of patience to be found), Heupel would be setting himself up for another ugly separation from his alma mater if he were to leave Rocky Top for Norman. 

You know what they say — fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me…you can't get fooled again (or something like that). 

I don't think Heupel will get fooled again by the allure of coaching for his alma mater. 

Oklahoma reporter drops interesting nugget about relationship between Josh Heupel and Bob Stoops

Well that’s interesting information