Tennessee moved quickly to find its new athletic director, Danny White. Because of that, it was reasonable to assume that the coaching search might get resolved quickly, too. When the program brought aboard Josh Heupel on Wednesday morning, formerly of UCF where he and White teamed up, the reactions appeared to be mixed.
Firstly, the optics of turning Tennessee into “UCF North” aren’t great, admittedly. The university brings in a new AD to find the next coach to lead the program through a tough time and he simply signs the coach from where he just departed. Secondly, there’s not a ton of name recognition with Heupel.