Despite making a number of staff changes at the end of December, Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel was still waiting to make one very important staff change. Heupel declined to renew strength and conditioning coach Kurt Schmidt’s contract but delayed in finding his replacement even with the start of the spring semester approaching.
The reason for the delay became clear Tuesday morning when Tennessee reportedly hired Indiana Director of Athletic Performance Derek Owings as the program’s new strength and conditioning coach. Poaching the national champions’ strength coach just hours after the Hoosiers’ lifted the title was notable. As was the financial compensation it took to do so.
CBS Sports’ Matt Zenitz reported Tuesday morning that Tennessee is paying Owings $1.2 million per year— making him the highest-paid strength coach in the history of the sport.
Owings had been with Cignetti since James Madison. Southern Cal tried to poach the young strength coach a year ago unsuccessfully. But the Vols ponied up financially to get the deal done.
More From RTI: Where Tennessee Football Lands In Various Way-Too-Early Top 25 Rankings
Heupel deciding to make this level of financial commitment to hir a strength coach certainly says a lot about his opinion on Owings, but it says just as much about how he assessed issues on Tennessee’s 2025 team.
Oft criticized for being too buddy-buddy with coaches, Heupel parted ways with the only strength coach he’s had as a head coach and poached one of the nation’s best strength coaches to replace him. A year after Tennessee was undisciplined and frankly soft in a lot of ways, Heupel is putting a premium on the strength and conditioning position.
Schmidt received criticism for the amount of injuries Tennessee had this season, and it’s always tricky to know how much responsibility falls on the strength and conditioning staff for injuries. A number of key Tennessee injuries were more serious and did not seem to be a strength and conditioning issue.
But as Tennessee was again heavily penalized and unable to make the necessary plays to win big games in the second half, the Vols clearly needed to be more disciplined. Those issues start and end with Heupel and a new strength coach alone won’t solve it. But Heupel is recognizing a problem that’s plagued Tennessee too often.
