Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde, a college football writer that many Tennessee Vols fans view as an enemy, was once again dismissive of Josh Heupel and UT football this week.

Forde detailed this week the coaches and programs he believes “can actually” win a national championship in college football within the next five years.

And unsurprisingly, there was no mention of Heupel or the Volunteers.

Forde included Indiana’s Curt Cignetti, Oregon’s Dan Lanning, Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman, Miami’s Mario Cristobal, Texas’s Steve Sarkisian, and Texas A&M’s Mike Elko among his list of coaches that “can actually” win a national championship (Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, and Ohio State’s Ryan Day weren’t included on the list because they’ve already won national championships).

Pat Forde has to be purposefully disrespecting Josh Heupel and Tennessee at this point

I don’t love these types of lists because no one really knows who will or won’t win a national championship. No one in college football media can predict the future, and no one is batting 1.000 with their predictions. So these random lists of coaches who can win championships are, well, completely pointless (the same goes for the silly head coach rankings that we see every summer).

But if you’re going to make one of these lists, I don’t see how you fail to include Heupel.

And look, it’s like I said, no one knows what the future holds. Maybe Heupel never wins a natty as a coach. But based on his resumé, he should be on Forde’s list.

Heupel, unlike two of the names on Forde’s list (Cristobal and Elko) has taken a team to the College Football Playoff. He also won a national championship as a player — which isn’t really relevant, but Forde pointed out that DeBoer won a NAIA national championship, which isn’t relevant either (Doug Socha and Mark Henninger have NAIA national championships on their resumé, too. Maybe Penn State should hire one of those guys since that’s a sign of an elite FBS coach in Forde’s eyes).

Since the start of the 2022 season, Heupel has won 35 games at Tennessee (in the five seasons before Heupel was hired, the Vols won 29 total games).

The truth is that Heupel isn’t a media darling. He’s never going to be. And that’s why guys like Forde are always going to be reluctant to give Heupel any respect.

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