On Sunday night, LSU football officially parted ways with head coach Brian Kelly before four years had expired in Baton Rouge. Now, the hunt is on for the next Tigers head coach. Could Tennessee’s Josh Heupel be a candidate? According to The Bengal Tiger on On3’s Matthew Brune, he’s a valid option to be placed on the hot board.
“The argument for Heupel to stay is asking how big of a difference there is between what he’s built at Tennessee and the potential at LSU,” Brune wrote. “It would take massive investment for LSU to pull this off, but if this school and program want to show that they are still the class of the SEC, this is the type of move that stamps that.”
Is Heupel leaving Tennessee for a job at LSU realistic? It’s tough to rule out any scenario you can think of in today’s college football, but it’s extremely tough to imagine Heupel ever being a serious candidate for this job.
Not because he’s not qualified, but because a jump to LSU would be a lateral move. He’s already at a program with the resources to win a national title inside the SEC. Why would he jump from a great situation, where he’s strongly backed by athletic director Danny White, for a program that you could argue is in a worse spot?
More From RTI: Tennessee Football 2025 Outgoing Transfer Tracker: Week 9
Worst-case scenario, if you even want to call it that, would be Heupel and his agent leveraging his name popping up for a raise at UT. It’s a common situation where coaches use openings elsewhere to get a bump in their pay to secure their spot at their current school.
If you look at betting odds to earn the job, Heupel isn’t even named. BetOnline has Jon Sumrall as the favorite at +150, followed by Joe Brady, Lane Kiffin, James Franklin, Eli Drinkwitz, Jeff Brohm, Brent Key, Jimbo Fisher, Clark Lea, Marcus Freeman, Urban Meyer, Rhett Lashlee, Jon Gruden, Kenny Dillingham, Lincoln Riley, Dabo Swinney, Dan Mullen, former Vols offensive coordinator Alex Golesh, Dan Lanning, Matt Campbell and Nick Saban.
Heupel’s squad will next be in action this weekend in Knoxville. He’s coaching Tennessee against the school he won a national title at as a quarterback, Oklahoma, at 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday. The game will air on ABC.
