Much will be made of the coaching matchup when Mississippi State travels to Ole Miss for its annual regular season finale in the Egg Bowl. First-year Mississippi State head coach Jeff Lebby worked under Lane Kiffin as offensive coordinator for two years in Oxford before leaving for the same position at Oklahoma only to return to the Magnolia State one season later.
But Lebby’s longest relationship with a sitting SEC head coach isn’t Lane Kiffin but rather Tennessee’s Josh Heupel.
The two have known each other from the very beginning of their coaching journeys. While Heupel was jump starting his career at Oklahoma as a GA in 2004 and then again as the Sooners quarterback coach starting in 2006, Lebby was getting his first taste of coaching as a student assistant for Bob Stoops from 2002-06.
“A guy that I have more respect for than maybe anybody in the profession,” Lebby said of Heupel on Tuesday. “A great friend and somebody that has been a great mentor to me. I had the opportunity to work for him and it was an incredible experience. A guy that’s incredibly consistent and you look at what he’s done, the amount of success he’s had, the culture he’s created at an incredible place. A ton of respect for who he is as a person, as a father, as a husband and then obviously, as a football coach, as well.”
While Heupel was rising up the ranks of Stoops staff at Oklahoma, Lebby was doing the same under Art Briles at Baylor. Lebby moved up the ranks from quality control coach to running backs coach to running backs coach with more titles attached to his role.
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Stoops infamously fired Heupel following the 2014 season and that led to the former Sooners’ quarterback reinventing himself as an offensive mind. Heupel began learning and adapting his offense to be more like the veer and shoot offense that Briles was running at Baylor.
When Danny White hired Heupel as UCF’s newest head coach following the 2017 season, Heupel turned to his old friend who had experience working in a similar offense. Lebby left Southeastern after just one year as offensive coordinator to be UCF’s quarterbacks coach. He became offensive coordinator a year later before leaving after 2019 to be Kiffin’s offensive coordinator at Ole Miss.
Saturday, the two meet on opposite sidelines for the first time as head coaches and just the second time since Lebby left Heupel’s staff five years prior.
“I’ve known known Jeff for a long time, dating all the way back to Oklahoma when he was still a student there,” Heupel said. “And great respect for him, his staff. It’s not just Jeff that I know. I know a bunch of their guys and good people, good coaches and doing a good job down there. So it’ll be unique in that I’ve sat in the staff room with those guys before.”
Kickoff between Tennessee and Mississippi State is at 7 p.m. ET on Saturday night. Dave Pasch, Dusty Dvorek and Taylor McGregor are on the call for ESPN.
