Tennessee is now ranked No. 5 in the nation. The Vols’ head coach maybe even better.

It’s time to start considering Josh Heupel as one of the best college football coaches in the nation. Certainly, fans are more focused on this season than seeing where the fourth-year Tennessee coach ranks on the college coaching hierarchy. That’s understandable with a possible national championship gleaming on the horizon waiting to be grasped. That seems a real possibility for the Vols this season, but Heupel has already proven elite no matter what happens this season.

Heupel may not have the complete team, namely the offensive tackles, to win it all. However, compared to his peers, his resume stacks up quite favorably with any coach in the nation. 

Let’s not give them man his flowers quite yet, but he deserves to be named among the top five coaches in the country and, perhaps, even higher than that.

Keep in mind that former Alabama coach Nick Saban is retired and that Jim Harbaugh ran to the NFL when his team came under scrutiny concerning a variety of NCAA violations. Therefore, the headset-wearing college football gurus aren’t quite what they once were just a year ago. Still, they’re pretty good.

Let’s start with the obvious No. 1 coach in the nation. Kirby Smart at Georgia is the most accomplished coach in the country and its not close. He has two championships to his credit. With Saban gone, he’s the king of college football.

Sabans’s replacement, Kalen DeBoer, would have to be considered a better coach than Heupel based on his accomplishments. DeBoer took Washington to a national championship game before the Crimson Tide came calling and, so far, has made a rather seamless transition in Tuscaloosa.

Utah’s Kyle Whittingham deserves mention among the best coaches in the country. He led the Utes to an undefeated season in 2008 so that means something. However, his teams have lost four or more games in the last three seasons.

For the record, Heupel also has an undefeated regular season on his record when he led Central Florida to a AAC championship in 2018 before losing to LSU in the Fiesta Bowl. There’s certainly no shame in that loss to the Tigers.

Whittingham is credited with doing more with less. Well, Heupel certainly did that with the Knights of Orlando. 

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has two national championships on his resume, but has seemed a bit lost without some of his key assistant coaches during his championship run. Former Tiger defensive coordinator Brent Venables is now the coach at Oklahoma. 

The Tigers were already headed downhill, but losing Venables may mean the end of Swinney ever making another true championship run. There isn’t an athletic director in the country, other than the one that resides in Clemson, that would take the current Swinney over Heupel. Clemson would trade Heupel and throw in their Tiger mascot for Heupel if they were strapped to a lie detector test.

There are a handful of coaches that would have been considered better coaches that Heupel in the preseason, such as Florida State’s Mike Norvell, Oregon’s Dan Lanning, Texas’ Steve Sarkisian and Ohio State’s Ryan Day. Then, there’s one coach that may rankle your feathers. We’ll get to him in a moment.

Florida State is 1-3 in Norvell’s fifth season as the Seminoles’ head coach, so let’s go ahead and rule him out. Oregon’s Dan Lanning has received plenty of attention for going 25-5 at Oregon, but he took over a program that was rolling. Heupel took over a program that was burning like a dumpster fire full of jet fuel.

The same should be said for Ryan Day, who took over Ohio State in 2019. Day has made the College Football Playoff twice, but has lost his most important game of the season and his only true Big Ten challenge to Michigan three consecutive times. 

The glean is clearly off of Day, who has struggled, especially recently, in the biggest games of his career. Day has made the College Football Playoff three times, but he also took over a program in much better shape than Tennessee when Heupel was hired in 2021.

Texas’ Steve Sarkisian might tempt an athletic director who is hoping to make a hire more than Heupel. Sarkisian has been successful, but was fired by Southern California amidst some rather serious allegations about alcohol abuse. Texas is rolling, but so are the Vols. Heupel would be the obvious choice.

Based on the above, there are only two coaches that an athletic director should clearly choose over Heupel based on their record and what they have done this season. So if you were an athletic director that could simply choose who you wanted to be your next head football coach, Smart would be the easy choice. DeBoer isn’t that far behind. 

Heupel’s resume can stand up to most any of those coaches, other than Smart, considering what he has accomplished in his career. Taking this season, what he took over and, perhaps, some recenct bias into account, there is only one other coach that deserves to be mentioned among the best in the nation. You know his name.

Yes, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin was fired at Southern California, which has never happened as a head coach to Heupel, but Kiffin took over a mess in Los Angeles that couldn’t be fixed. Now, he’s made Ole Miss a contender, which is no small feat. Kiffin certainly comes with some quirkiness and a questionable NCAA background, but he seems to have survived all of that and has the Rebels playing at an elite level, at least it seems that way. 

Kiffin’s team has yet to be challenged. They’ve only played Furman, Middle Tennessee State, Wake Forest and Georgia Southern in four consecutive pummellings this season. Heupel has been somewhat challenged against North Carolina State and, certainly challenged when he beat then-No. 15 Oklahoma on the road.

Therefore, I’ll give you Smart and DeBoer. However, an argument could be made that Heupel is the third best coach in college football. If that seems too audacious, let’s dial it back a bit. Heupel is certainly within the top five coaches in college football given what he did at Central Florida and how quickly he’s resurrected the Vols. 

There isn’t any other coach in the country I believe could do that, other than Smart and DeBoer, and even that’s debatable considering neither coach has had to build a program from nothing. Heupel has pulled a program from the depths of college football hell. 

Perhaps you don’t think Heupel is one of the top three coaches in the nation. That depends largely on what you think of Kiffin, which probably isn’t very positive.