Last night, Indiana football downed Miami and won the national title. Early on Tuesday morning, Tennessee football made a power move ahead of its 2026 season. Josh Heupel and the Vols are expected to hire the Hoosiers’ director of athletics performance, Derek Owings, as their new strength and conditioning coach, according to a report from Matt Zenitz.
Zenitz dubbed Owings ‘an important behind the scenes figure these past two years at Indiana’. He also 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.
USC went after Owings, a 32-year-old, last season, but he turned down the opportunity. The pitch and pay day from Heupel and the Vols was enough to leave the reigning national champions, though.
According to his Indiana bio, Owings has trained 23 All-America selections and 27 first-team all-conference picks.
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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.
As a player, Owings was a wide receiver and tight end who started at Eastern Michigan from 2012-13. Then, he transferred to Mercer, where he played from 2014-15 and was an Academic All-SoCon selection.
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Vols are going after the best ,we were weak last year, no denying it !