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One ESPN ranking has Josh Heupel as the second-best active college football head coach

IMG_3593by: Grant Ramey07/22/25GrantRamey
Josh Heupel, Tennessee Football
Josh Heupel, Tennessee Football

Josh Heupel is the second-best head coach in FBS college football according to one ESPN ranking, coming in ahead of Kirby Smart, James Franklin, Dabo Swinney and others. 

Heupel trailed only Ohio State’s Ryan Day on the list from ESPN’s Bill Connelly, who ranked the best active FBS head coaches with a minimum of four years on the job, basing the ranking on performance versus expectation and historic program baseline averages.

After seven years as a head coach, ESPN’s coach rating for Heupel is 15.1 — Day had a rating of 15.8 — ahead of Smart’s 14.4, Franklin’s 11.6 and Swinney’s 11.2. Lane Kiffin had a 10.7 rating and Brian Kelly and a 9.3, just behind Lane Kiffin at 9.5.

Josh Heupel at Tennessee: 37-15 overall, 20-12 SEC

Heupel’s average versus baseline was 13.1 and his average SP+ rating was 18.1. Day’s average versus baseline was 6.1 and his average SP+ rating was 30.4. A full explanation of the rankings and the analytics behind the rankings is here.

“Maybe the name that jumps out the most above is Josh Heupel,” Connelly wrote. “I think anyone would consider him a very good coach (he’s 37-15 overall), but he doesn’t exactly draw any ‘best in the game?’ hype.” 

Back in May, Heupel did not make ESPN’s ranking of the top 10 college football head coaches, receiving only three votes in a poll of the network’s college football reporters. He was ranked No. 11 by The Sporting News and No. 17 by USA Today. 

Heupel is 65-23 overall as a head coach, after going 28-8 in three seasons at UCF before taking the Tennessee job in January 2021.

Josh Heupel ‘might not be getting the credit he deserves’

“He benefited from a positive situation at UCF,” Connelly wrote, “where he inherited a rising program from Scott Frost in 2019 and produced big ratings in his first couple of years on the job.”

He led Tennessee to the College Football Playoff with a 10-3 record last season and went 11-2 in 2022, beating Clemson in the Orange Bowl in the first New Year’s Six bowl game for the Vols in the College Football Playoff era. His first Tennessee team went 7-6 in 2021 and the Vols were 9-4 in 2023.  

“His average rating at Tennessee has been a solid 14.0 as well,” Connelly wrote. “The Volunteers had been up and down for years, but he has produced four top-20 SP+ ratings in a row and two top-10s in the past three years. 

“He might not be getting the credit he deserves for that.”

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