Josh Heupel’s former right-hand man in commanding his offense to begin his Tennessee football tenure is returning to Neyland Stadium next season. Alex Golesh, who was the offensive coordinator and tight ends coach from 2021-22 with the Vols, has landed the head coaching job at Auburn. As a result, he’s going to have to steer the Tigers during a game in Knoxville.
Tennessee’s five-game SEC home schedule next season features Auburn, LSU (which will feature Lane Kiffin), Alabama, Kentucky and Texas. The road games are against Arkansas, South Carolina, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt.
Golesh just wrapped up his third season as head coach at USF, where he’s helped lead the Bulls to a 23-15 record. The offensive-minded coach inherited a terrible situation in Tampa with the Bulls posting a 1-11 record the year before his arrival. But Golesh got USF back to a bowl game in his first year as head coach.
USF went 7-6 in each of Golesh’s first two years as head coach before taking another leap this season. The Bulls broke onto the scene back in September with an upset win over Florida and looked like a legit group of five College Football Playoff contender. But an upset loss against Navy earlier this month dashed the Bulls’ playoff hopes. South Florida wrapped up the regular season with a 52-3 rout of Rice on Saturday.
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Golesh inherits an Auburn program that’s floundered since firing Gus Malzahn following the 2020 season. The Tigers hired Boise State’s Brian Harsin to replace Malzahn, but fired him after a season and a half. Hugh Freeze did not make it much longer with Auburn, firing him following an early November loss against Kentucky.
Freeze’s Tigers went 16-21 over the last three years, failing to make a bowl game each of the last two seasons. Auburn is 27-35 in the last five seasons after firing Malzahn.
Golesh spent two seasons at Tennessee as Josh Heupel’s offensive coordinator from 2021-22, helping rebuild the Vols’ program and one of the nation’s best offenses. He was previously on Heupel’s staff at UCF before coming to Tennessee.
