Tennessee made a big move this offseason when head coach Josh Heupel promoted longtime analyst Levorn Harbin to the vacant outside linebackers coaching position that Mike Ekeler left behind.
Harbin has been with the Tennessee program since Heupel and his staff took over in the winter of 2021. Now, after a handful of years in the program as an analyst, Harbin is getting his shot at leading Tennessee’s outside linebackers group.
Tennessee’s players don’t call him Coach Harbin, though.
It’s Coach Chop.
“That came when I was a coach, a GA (grad assistant), at Auburn,” Harbin said about his catchy nickname while speaking with the media on Friday. “Senator Tommy Tuberville gave me that nickname, so that is where it comes from. Everybody back then was close-knit. Everybody had a nickname. My name was Chop, short for pork chop. So, there we go.”
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Harbin has ties to the Tennessee coaching staff that extend past his time in Knoxville, as he served as a defensive analyst at Auburn when current Tennessee DL Coach Rodney Garner held the same position with the Tigers. Both coaches came to Knoxville from Auburn at the same time for the start of Heupel’s new era on Rocky Top.
“Obviously, you always like seeing guys get their opportunity and all that,” Garner said about Harbin on Friday. “He is a guy who worked with me at Auburn. He came here, has worked with me, and worked his way up. It is good to see people get rewarded and get that opportunity. ”
Aside from his work with Tennessee’s defensive players on the field, Chop has also been a talented and strong recruiter for the Vols. Harbin’s recruiting ability is just another added bonus of moving him to a full-time assistant position this offseason.
“He does a great job with it,” Garner said about Harbin’s recruiting prowess. “He is relentless. He does a great job building relationships. He works at it. He builds trust. He adds value. That is a thing that is sort of getting lost in today’s new age of different ways of recruiting. He does a great job of building relationships and building trust and having the opportunity to close on guys in the end.”
Harbin’s arrival in Knoxville in 2021 wasn’t just about coaching for the Vols or staying with Garner at a new program, though. It was about family.
“Honestly, it was my daughter,” Harbin said about why he was drawn to Tennessee. “I had a chance to go to Tennessee or go somewhere else. I also had a lot of friends that had taken a job here about a month before me. But really, my daughter, for whatever reason, she always loved Tennessee. I didn’t know, she just wanted to go to school here, so she is a student here. We love it here. The people have been great to me and my family. Coach Heupel is great to work for. Coach (Tim) Banks is great to work for. So, it’s been awesome.”
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