The Josh Heupel coaching tree expanded to Auburn, AL, on Sunday afternoon with the Tigers’ announcement of Alex Golesh’s hiring as the next head coach of the football program. Golesh was hired from South Florida, where he had previously spent the last three seasons as the head coach, leading the Bulls to a 23-15 record overall.
Prior to his time in Tampa, though, Golesh was orchestrating the Tennessee offense. Golesh joined Josh Heupel’s inaugural staff in Knoxville and spent the 2021 and 2022 seasons as the Vols’ offensive coordinator. Golesh also snigpent one year as Heupel’s offensive coordinator at Central Florida in 2020 before the two moved to the Tennessee program.
“Excited for him,” Heupel said about Golesh on Wednesday. “Obviously, did a great job here and did a great job at USF.”
The unique thing about the new SEC scheduling format is the new opportunities that teams will have to play each other. Tennessee, for instance, hasn’t played Auburn since 2020. The two teams will square off in Knoxville next season, though. That means that it’ll be Heupel vs. Golesh in Knoxville at some point during the 2026 football season.
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“It’ll be like playing Mississippi State, where you got one of your former guys (Jeff Lebby) that’s on the other side of us,” Heupel said. “Got a couple of them inside of this league. Excited for both of those guys.”
Tennessee has played Jeff Lebby’s Mississippi State program in each of the last two years, going 2-0 against the Bulldogs in both Knoxville and Starkville. Heupel and Lebby initially met when Lebby was still a student at Oklahoma and reunited at Central Florida when Heupel was the Knights’ head coach. Lebby was UCF’s quarterbacks coach in 2018 and 2019, and added the title of offensive coordinator during the 2019 season.
Tigers fans can expect to see Golesh bring a high-octane style of offense with him to Auburn. Since leaving Tennessee, Golesh has continued to put up points while with South Florida, averaging more than 35 points per game across his three seasons in Tampa.
The 2026 schedule hasn’t been released yet, but we do know that Tennessee and Auburn will square off at some point in Knoxville. Alex Golesh will be one of four newly-appointed head coaches that Tennessee will face next year, alongside LSU’s Lane Kiffin, Arkansas’s Ryan Silverfield, and Kentucky’s Will Stein.
Tennessee’s 2026 SEC games include: at Arkansas, at South Carolina, vs Auburn, vs Alabama, vs Kentucky, vs LSU, vs Texas, at Texas A&M, and at Vanderbilt. The dates are unknown at this time.
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