Tennessee Football’s Josh Heupel has been named one of the 26 head coaches on the 2025 Bobby Dodd Trophy Preseason Watch List, as announced by the organization on Monday afternoon.
Heupel is one of eight coaches from the SEC on the list, alongside Alabama’s Kaleb DeBoer, Missouri’s Eliah Drinkwitz, Texas A&M’s Mike Elko, LSU’s Brian Kelly, Texas’s Steve Sarkisian, Georgia’s Kirby Smart, and Oklahoma’s Brent Venables.
The Bobby Dodd Trophy honors “the FBS football coach whose program represents three pillars of success: Scholarship, Leadership and Integrity. The award honors the coach of a team with a successful season on the field and equally as important, stresses the importance of academic excellence and desire to give back to the community.”
Previous winners include Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman (2024), Florida State’s Mike Norvell (2023), and Tulane’s Willie Fritz (2022).
Watch List 👀@coachjoshheupel has been named to the 2025 @thedoddtrophy Preseason Watch List
📰 » https://t.co/sGFFMkWD8B#GBO 🍊 pic.twitter.com/R6NwOeQaaX
— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) July 7, 2025
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Heupel enters his fifth season at Tennessee with a 37-15 record in 52 games on Rocky Top, helping revive the Vols’ program in the 2020s with three straight bowl appearances and the program’s first-ever showing in the College Football Playoffs.
According to Tennessee’s Bill Martin on X, Heupel is Tennessee’s quickest coach to 30 total wins (42 games) since Phillip Fulmer did so in 38 games. He’s third on that list in Tennessee history, with Bill Battle leading the way at just 35 games.
For the 2nd time in 3 years, @Vol_Football wins 10 regular season games. Josh Heupel (2x in 4 yrs) joins Phillip Fulmer (5x in 17 yrs) and General Neyland (5x in 21 yrs) as the only UT coaches to achieve that reg. season feat multiple times. Next stop @CFBPlayoff! pic.twitter.com/RaCb6XahB3
— Bill Martin (@Bill_Martin) November 30, 2024
In his first season at Tennessee, Heupel led the Vols to a 7-5 record but suffered a heartbreaking last-minute overtime defeat to Purdue in the Music City Bowl. In the three seasons since, Heupel has gone 30-9 with the Volunteers with wins in the Citrus Bowl over Clemson, the Orange Bowl over Clemson, and a loss in the College Football Playoffs to eventual National Champion Ohio State.
“Heupel’s revival of the Volunteers has seen him produce a 37-15 overall record, 11 victories over Top 25 teams and three straight top-20 poll finishes,” Tennessee wrote in a press release on Monday. “The 11 ranked wins are sixth nationally among FBS head coaches during that span and are already fifth in UT history. Heupel’s .712 winning percentage is the second-highest by a Vol coach in the last five decades.”
Tennessee also boasts its success in the classroom under Heupel. According to UTSports, “The Vols produced semester records for GPA in the fall of 2024 (3.18) and the spring of 2025 (3.25).”
Josh Heupel will be featured at SEC Media Days on Tuesday, July 15, in Atlanta, GA. Stay tuned to Rocky Top Insider for full coverage of the event.
