Tennessee Vols fans won't like where The Athletic ranks Josh Heupel among CFB coaches
The Athletic recently ranked the top college football coaches and Tennessee Vols fans probably won’t like where Josh Heupel lands
We're a little less than six months away from the start of the 2023 college football season which means it's list ranking season.
Over the next couple of months, there will be a plethora of lists that rank various things in college football — coaches, players, recruiting classes, stadiums, etc.
We've already started getting a few of those lists this week.
247Sports, for example, ranked the top 35 coaches in college football earlier this week.
Heupel came in at No. 10 on their list.
On Thursday, The Athletic's Bruce Feldman revealed his top 25 college football coaches.
Alabama's Nick Saban came in at No. 1 and Georgia's Kirby Smart came in a No. 2. No surprise there.
Heupel ranked No. 22 on Feldman's list.
From The Athletic: He took what was a punch line of a program in the wake of a dumpster fire of a decade and somehow got the Vols to an 11-2 mark in Year 2. That’s quite a feat. At UCF, he was 28-8 after taking over for Scott Frost, though it felt like things were starting to backslide there. In Knoxville, he’s got things going full speed ahead.
Some of the names ahead of Heupel were Florida State's Mike Norvell at No. 21, Kentucky's Mark Stoops at No. 18, Nebraska's Matt Rhule at No. 15, and Kansas State's Chris Klieman at No. 13.
I wasn't expecting Heupel to be in the top five or anything, but this seems a little disrespectful.
Sure, Heupel still has to prove that he can sustain success on Rocky Top, but he should be getting more credit for the turnaround at Tennessee. Two years ago, folks like CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd were saying, loudly, that the Vols wouldn't be relevant again for a long time.
Heupel, however, immediately turned the program around and had Tennessee on the cusp of a College Football Playoff appearance in just two years.
Regardless of where Heupel falls in these rankings, I can guarantee Feldman and anyone else that there aren't 21 coaches that Tennessee fans would take over Heupel.
In fact, there might not be any coaches that Vols fans would take over Heupel (that's not an insult to Saban or Smart, they're good fits where they're at…that's just not the style that works for the Vols).
Feldman is one of the best college football reporters/writers in the business. But I think he missed the mark a bit on this one. Heupel more than proved last season (and in 2021) that he's at least a top-10 college football coach.
