Heupel leads Tennessee into Oklahoma, where he quarterbacked the Sooners to a national championship as a player before being dumped as a coach.
Josh Heupel speaks on his deep-rooted respect for the Oklahoma program along with Tennessee looking to spoil College GameDay in Norman. Jake Trotter covers college football for ESPN. He joined ESPN in 2011. Before that, he worked at The Oklahoman, Austin American-Statesman and Middletown Journal newspapers. You can follow him @Jake_Trotter.coach Bob Stoops called longtime assistant Cale Gundy. Stoops asked Gundy if he could meet at Bison Witches in downtown Norman.
Heupel was -- and remains -- OU royalty. In 2000, he quarterbacked the Sooners to their seventh national championship; OU hasn't won a title since. Saturday, for the first time since the firing, Heupel returns to the stadium where he became a Sooners legend. In his fourth season at, Heupel brings the surging sixth-ranked Volunteers to Norman for OU's long-anticipated first conference game as a member of the SEC.
"I have no idea how Leach found Josh Heupel," said Tulsa offensive coordinator Steve Spurrier Jr., son of legendary Florida coach Steve Spurrier and part of Stoops' first OU staff."But one of the really important variables for Leach when he recruited quarterbacks was, what kind of completion percentage did they have? He doesn't have to hit deep balls. Doesn't have to have a really strong arm. But he has to throw completions. That was always crucial in his offense.
"We had the players. We just had to get the right coaches, structure, discipline. ... and the right quarterback," said Rocky Calmus, an All-America linebacker for the Sooners then."Josh would be the first to tell you he didn't have the strongest arm, but he was accurate. He read it and he could put it where it needed to be."
"We were not prepared for that. But Josh Heupel was," Gundy said."The belief that Josh Heupel had and what he portrayed while he was here got this whole team going. The belief that we could be better than everybody, that we could win every game -- that came from Josh Heupel."Flying under the radar, the Sooners roared through a three-game stretch that OU fans would term"Red October." The Sooners annihilated No.
"He was remarkably calm in who he was," Spurrier said."A calm confidence about him that rubbed off on other people." The OU defense forced Weinke into three turnovers, including a Marshall interception, and didn't allow the Seminoles offense to score. Heupel and the Sooners did enough offensively to win 13-2, capping off a magical season.Said former Oklahoma Heisman winner Jason White of Josh Heupel:"I remember thinking to myself then, that dude's going to be a great coach.
"He had a huge hand in all of it," Jones said."If you're going to call any school Quarterback U now, you have to start with Oklahoma. And you think about the guys that he had, and just the quarterbacks at Oklahoma, it started with him." After firing Heupel, Stoops replaced him with East Carolina offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley, another Leach protégé out of Texas Tech. Three years later, Stoops retired and OU named Riley its head coach instead. Under Riley, OU advanced to the playoff in three consecutive years with three different quarterbacks: 2017 Heisman winner Baker Mayfield, Murray and Alabama transfer Jalen Hurts; all three are now NFL starters.
Over Heupel's two seasons as Missouri's offensive coordinator, the Tigers ranked sixth nationally in both yards per dropback and passing touchdowns .
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