The new Tennessee athlete director, Danny White, does not have to look far to land his head soccer coach.
Sources told ESPN that White Josh Heupel of UCF has been appointed as the Vols’ next head coach. White also appointed Heupel when White was the UCF athletics director. Tennessee convened a team meeting on Wednesday morning at 8:30 p.m.
White, who was announced as the new AD in Tennessee last Thursday, worked quickly to find a replacement for Jeremy Pruitt, who was fired on Jan. 18 following the investigation following an investigation into University Chancellor Donde Plowman’s serious offenses of the NCAA Rules’. White throws a wide net through the Parker Search Firm and reaches out to and / or interviews with several candidates, including James Franklin of Penn State, Luke Fickell of Cincinnati, Sonny Dykes of SMU, PJ Fleck of Minnesota and offensive coordinator of Clemson, Tony Elliott, among others.
Sources told ESPN that Elliott has been having serious discussions about the job over the past few days, but has rejected Tennessee’s beliefs and preferred to stay in Clemson.
Heupel, 42, has been UCF’s head coach for the past three seasons after taking over for Scott Frost, which led UCF to an unbeaten 13-0 record in 2017. Heupel is 28-8 at the Knights, including a 12-1 record in his first season in 2018. They finished 6-4 last season. Heupel would owe UCF a buyout of $ 3.4 million according to the terms of his contract.
UCF has all three of its seasons in Orlando on the national top-8 rankings and has averaged 42.2 points per game in all three seasons.
Heupel was a runner-up in the Heisman Trophy as a quarterback in Oklahoma’s national championship team in 2000 and has SEC coaching experience. He was Missouri’s attacking coordinator / quarterbacks coach in 2016-’17 before getting the UCF head coach position. Heupel was also the co-attacking co-ordinator / coach of the quarter under Bob Stoops in Oklahoma for four seasons, but was fired after the 2014 season when the Sooners won 8-5.
Heupel would be the Vols’ sixth different head coach, returning to Phillip Fulmer, who was sacked at the end of the 2008 season.