It’s spring break for students at the University of Tennessee. For Tennessee football players, that often means heading home to see their families before returning to campus to dive into spring camp.
The Vols get spring practice going on Monday, shortly after the players are scheduled to return. That means there’s a short turnaround to get fully into the swing of things.
This also comes after Tennessee’s newly hired Director of Sports Performance, Derek Owings, began to implement his philosophies. He had about seven weeks to meet the team and get them in the weight room to get on the right track.
With the team heading home, Owings had a message for the squad. He revealed what he told the Vols during an interview with Mike Keith.
“Have fun, recharge, but you got to be safe,” Owings said. “There’s a gray area of we’ve pushed hard for the past seven weeks now. You’ve got to let your body recharge, recover and grow, but you got to stay sharp because when we get back, we got a team meeting at 8 p.m. Sunday night, and then we’re rolling Monday morning. You don’t have a couple days. I told them, you don’t have 72 hours to get your body weight back, get back in shape, flush your legs. We’re rolling. So you’ve got to be a pro when you’re back home, but you got to get away a little bit mentally and physically so you can recharge.”
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Tennessee hired Owings from Indiana, fresh off of helping the Hoosiers win a national title. It’s reported that Tennessee will pay Owings a $1.2 million salary per year, making him the highest-paid strength and conditioning coach in the history of college football.
Owings only joined Indiana two years ago when Curt Cignetti got the job, but he’s been with Cignetti for quite some time now. He initially joined his staff in 2020 at James Madison.
Before his time with Cignetti at JMU and Indiana, Owings was the associate strength and conditioning coach at Texas Tech for two seasons. Before that, he built a relationship with Heupel, working on his UCF staff in 2018 as assistant director of sports performance.
He was also a graduate assistant at Utah State from 2016-18, coming in just after Heupel left the program for the offensive coordinator gig at Missouri. Owings was an intern at Mercer and Michigan, as well.
