Tennessee’s Velus Jones Jr. and Hendon Hooker were asked what it meant to them to become bowl eligible after last season’s disaster and the barrage of players that entered the transferring portal following it.
“We eligible, right?” Jones Jr. asked Hooker in the middle of answering the question.
“Yep,” Hooker responded.
That sums up how different first year head coach Josh Heupel is handling the Vols’ rebuild compared to his predecessors. Heck, compare him to other SEC east coaches. South Carolina had “bowl eligible” t-shirts after upsetting Auburn for its sixth win of the season.
For Heupel, reaching bowl eligibility was key in rebuilding his program. But it was more about the extra practices and room for tangible growth that’s important to Heupel.
“Important, for sure,” Heupel said of the Vols reaching bowl eligibility. “I don’t think there’s anyone inside our program— this is going to sound odd— was focused on that part of it. It’s not what I talked about. I don’t think our focus was from our players. It was truly on South Alabama, but on us continuing to grow and compete.
“It’s big for us because it continues to build the momentum we’ve had going over the course of the season. It gives you opportunities to continue and compete into December and grow, particularly with your young players and some development that happens there. That’s really important in year one.”
Heupel’s inaugural season on the field has been different then past rebuilds. There have certainly been negatives in Heupel’s first year. The 43-year old started the wrong quarterback to begin the season and couldn’t beat the worst Florida team since the SEC split into divisions in 1992.
Still, Tennessee has dominated teams worse than them on its schedule. That includes SEC wins over South Carolina and Missouri and now two group of five wins.
No one is, or should, build a statue for Heupel because he dominated non conference opponents that Tennessee expects to defeat easily. Still, Tennessee beat its group of five opponents by an average of 39 points this season.
Tennessee played eight group of five opponents from 2016-19 (no non conference games last season). The Vols lost one of those games, didn’t beat a single opponent by more than 24 points, won two games by one possession, another two by two possessions and won by an average of 10 points.
Dominating bad opponents isn’t the end all be all, but Heupel deserves praise for how complete his team has played in those games.
Still, Heupel isn’t asking for praise after doing what is expected out of the head coach at Tennessee. His ego doesn’t need a boost, and all he’s worried about is getting his program as good as he can as quickly as he can.
“You want a chance to have the ability to compete against the best, and then go beat them,” Heupel said Monday. “Certainly, that’s the bar in this conference and for us with our schedule. That’s the challenge our kids and I wake up to every day. We go compete and keep pushing forward. We’re in a race to get there as fast as we possibly can, but we will.”
After spending a decade getting bull crap shoved down their throats by used car salesmen, Heupel’s attitude and approach is refreshing for Vol nation.
Time will tell if Josh Heupel can get Tennessee back to the top of the college football mountaintop, but credit Heupel for understanding that bowl eligibility is just a step forward for his program.
The mountain gets steeper the higher you go and nothing is going to get easier as the former Heisman Trophy runner up tries to rebuild one of college football’s most storied programs.
One Response
Really? You’re going to try to knock him down a peg by pointing out the Vols lost to “the worst Florida team since the SEC split into divisions”? That was before Mullen had lost his locker room. If I remember, that same team put up a pretty good fight against Alabama the week before. It was a night game in the Swamp against the #11 team in the country. Even so, we still had opportunities to win the game . . . SMH.