Josh Heupel is a stoic man. He isn’t one to wear his emotions on his sleeve and that continued throughout the week when he talked about his return to Oklahoma where he won the 2000 National Championship as a quarterback and coached for a decade before his head coach fired him.
All week, Heupel said that this game wasn’t about him. He said it multiple times in the postgame including to his team in the locker room postgame.
But one other thing was evident too. This Tennessee team knew that this game meant a lot to its head coach. Heupel picked up on it too. Following the Vols’ 25-15 win in Heupel’s return to Norman, Tennessee’s fourth-year head coach got emotional while thanking his team for the way they had his back.
“Coming back to Norman was never about me,” Heupel said before choking up and pausing. “It was not. But I appreciate you all having a little extra for me. I do. I love you, guys. And I really mean that. I’m proud of you. I’m proud of how we’ve grown and our best is still out in front of us.”
Had a little something extra. pic.twitter.com/5R09sSlFb9
— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) September 22, 2024
Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava cut Heupel off before the head coach could begin the postgame prayer. Iamaleava gave Heupel the game ball like he did on the field following the game.
“We did that for you coach Heup,” Iamaleava said.
“It’ll go in the office, for sure,” Heupel told the media of his players giving him the game ball.
More From RTI: Everything Josh Heupel Said After Tennessee Knocked Off Oklahoma
Tennessee’s fourth-year head coach’s return to Oklahoma would already have been emotional enough because what he did as a player and a coach at Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, but there was even more emotion tied into Heupel’s return personally.
Heupel’s mother Cindy passed away in May at the age of 69. While Heupel hadn’t been back to Norman much in the last decade, his parents moved to Edmond, Oklahoma in 2007 which is less than 100 miles from the University of Oklahoma.
On College Gameday and in a postgame interview with Holly Rowe, Heupel stated that his mother would be looking down and watching the game while getting choked up.
“She was looking forward to this game,” Heupel said in his postgame press conference. “She’s got a lot of friends across the state that know that she was looking forward to it. So it was a unique game to come back and have to be a road game for me and this football team, but a home game for a lot of my family.”
