I'm starting to think the national media has something against Tennessee Vols head coach Josh Heupel.

Over the last several months, I've consistently seen Heupel ranked low on "top head coaches" type lists while other less accomplished coaches are ranked higher.

On Wednesday, The Athletic published an article where they placed each college football coach in a tier.

As you'd expect, Alabama's Nick Saban was in a tier by himself — tier 1A.

Tier 1B includes names like Ohio State's Ryan Day, Georgia's Kirby Smart, Texas A&M's Jimbo Fisher and Clemson's Dabo Swinney (among a few others).

Then there's tier 2. That's where Heupel should be listed. But he's not.

That tier includes Wake Forest's Dave Clawson, Iowa's Kirk Ferentz, Rutgers' Greg Schiano, and Florida's Billy Napier, among many others.

Heupel, meanwhile, is listed in tier 3 with Toledo's Jason Candle, James Madison's Curt Cignetti, Utah State's Blake Anderson, and Akron's Joe Moorhead (among many others).

Obviously, Heupel doesn't belong in tier 3. What's mindblowing is that they put Napier in tier 2, even though he's coached 0 SEC games. Napier had success at Louisiana, but we have no idea how he'll fare at Florida.

Heupel, though, had success at UCF (28-8 in three seasons) and quickly demonstrated at Tennessee that he can win in the SEC, taking the Vols from 3-7 to 7-6 in his first season leading the program (to put that in perspective, Nick Saban went 7-6 in his first season at Alabama after the program went 6-7 the year before).

I realize all of this is subjective. The one thing, however, that we can look at that's definite is career winning percentage.

Here's a list of the coaches in tier 2 that have a higher career winning percentage than Heupel:

• Billy Napier

That's it. That's the whole list. Out of 23 coaches listed in tier 2, one of them has a better career winning percentage than Heupel.

And yes, I'm aware that the one coach I pointed to as a problem on this list is the one coach that has a higher winning percentage than Heupel. But I think it illustrates how problematic this whole list is. Napier gets the benefit of the doubt from The Athletic while Heupel gets buried in tier 3 (by the way, if Napier goes 7-6 in his first year at Florida, he'll have the same winning percentage as Heupel). I don't see how Napier can be included in tier 2 while Heupel is relegated to tier 3.

The only explanation for this is that Heupel isn't a media darling. Even though he's a non-controversial head coach who seemingly does everything the right way, he just doesn't have the favor of the national media.

It's a shame, too. Everyone likes to be recognized for doing good work. And Heupel has done some great work in college football. The Athletic, however, refuses to give him the credit he deserves.

If the Vols win 10 games this season, maybe Heupel will finally get the bump to tier 2. Though at this point, I'm not sure that would even do the trick.

Featured image via Calvin Mattheis/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK