Josh Heupel has created a 'night and day difference' in Tennessee's culture

Ollie Lane is a link to three different eras of Tennessee football. He was recruited by Butch Jones as a three-star offensive lineman in the 2018 class. He played his first three seasons under Jeremy Pruitt and has played the last two under Josh Heupel. 

“Honestly,” Lane said after practice on Monday, “I still think it’s pretty wild.”

And when the 6-foot-4, 325-pound redshirt senior offensive lineman looks around now, it’s hard to think of what the Tennessee football program was like in the past.

Ollie Lane: ‘Everyone is bought in. It’s a whole new mindset’

“Now seeing where we’re at from where we were, it’s a night and day difference,” Lane said. “The attitude in the complex is completely different. Everybody has a different mindset when they come in here, that it’s time to work. 

“Nobody that’s kind of wishy washy about it. Everyone is bought in. It’s a whole new mindset, a new culture, that Coach Heupel has done a good job of kind of investing in and building that team chemistry with everybody.”

Tennessee cleaned house in January 2021, hiring a new athletic director and head football coach after Phillip Fulmer stepped down and Pruitt was fired amid an NCAA investigation into alleged recruiting violations committed by his football program. 

Danny White was hired away from Central Florida as the new AD and only days later, he brought in Heupel, his head coach at UCF.

Heupel turned heads with a 7-6 record in Year 1, then started his second year with an 8-0 record and a No. 1 ranking in the initial College Football Playoff Top 25 in November. The Vols finished 11-1 after a win over Clemson in the Orange Bowl in December, the program’s first 11-win season since 2001. 

Josh Heupel: ‘We build trust every single day’

Heupel, during an appearance on The Hard Count with On3’s J.D. Pickell last week, addressed the importance of the culture he established early at Tennessee.

“Great accountability and love and respect for each other,” Heupel said. “We build trust every single day. It’s a group and a staff and a program that are fierce competitors that love to compete in everything they’re doing and love to have fun when we’re doing it together. 

“I think you can do those things at a really high level. You can enjoy the competition and you can love and enjoy the people that you’re doing it with. That’s what this group has lived out every single day.”

Lane knows it because he’s lived it, dating all the way back to the Butch Jones era.

“Like I said, it’s just a night and day difference from what it used to be,” Lane said.