Tennessee football: Is Josh Heupel the new Doug Dickey?

With a 4-4 record entering its bye week, Tennessee football is honestly in the best position fans thought it could be in at this point of Josh Heupel’s first year on the job. After all, Heupel is taking over a mess of a program.

Everything about Heupel’s tenure as a head coach is shaping up to mirror that of another legendary head coach on Rocky Top in Doug Dickey. Anybody who knows the history of the Vols knows Dickey oversaw some of its best years in school history in the late 1960s.

However, back in 1964, Tennessee football was very similar to the situation it’s in now. Dickey took over that year and went 4-5-1. Like Heupel is doing now, he was trying to resurrect a once-proud program, he installed a new offense and new traditions, and the program under him was at the onset of dramatic changes to the college football landscape.

That first year under Dickey, the Vols were seven years removed from their last bowl game and three years removed from their last winning season. The program had fallen apart after winning the 1956 SEC Championship under Bowden Wyatt, its only title in the post-Robert Neyland years at the time.

What made it worse was there was a massive level of attrition. Wyatt’s last year was 1962, and Jim McDonald then coached one season in 1963. Dickey’s first year marked the third coach in three years for the program.

Heupel is in a similar situation. He takes over a program two years removed from a winning season and a bowl game, five years removed from a top 25 finish and 23 years removed from any championship. Oh, and he’s taking over amidst an NCAA investigation, which led to his predecessor Jermey Pruitt’s firing and created a wave of transfers, so the attrition is also there.

To help redirect Tennessee football into better days, Heupel and Dickey injected new flare. Dickey moved the Vols away from the single-wing, which they swore by for nearly 40 years dating back to Robert Neyland’s first year. He installed the new Wing-T offense, which opened things up more relative to the time.

It’s no different with Heupel, who is installing his version of the spread offense, which is set up by the run and operates at a high tempo. This is after three years of the standard pro-style offense, which the Vols had run for 33 of the previous 38 years.

Offense isn’t the only new flare both coaches are bringing in. Heupel, with athletic director Danny White, is bringing in an array of uniform combinations, highlighted by all black against the South Carolina Gamecocks, and they also brought back Checker Neyland. Dickey, meanwhile, introduced the Power T, the orange and white checkerboard end zones and running through the T.

Sticking with changes, Dickey also oversaw Tennessee football head into the dramatic changes gripping college football. The SEC was about to integrate. In 1966, Nate Northington and Greg Page were two African American scholarship players on the Kentucky Wildcats’ freshmen team, and in 1967, Northington became the first Black scholarship player to play an SEC varsity game.

For his part, Dickey tried to recruit Albert Davis, but the university didn’t admit him, in 1967. He did get Lester McClain, though, and in 1968, McClain became the first Black player to score a touchdown in an SEC game. By the time Dickey left in 1970, the team was fully integrated.

As he moves the Vols into the future, Heupel is about to oversee another dramatic social change involving players. It won’t be the same as integration, but another issue of justice has finally been resolved, and that deals with players’ Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) payments. They can finally profit off their name, this being the first year that happens.

A former player himself from this century, Heupel will play a huge role in players profiting off their name. The same way the Vols used integration to their advantage under Dickey, they could use the NIL ruling to their advantage under Heupel.

There are also parallels in the dramatic changes to the college football landscape. In 1968, the AP Poll finally released its final rankings after the bowl games, so teams could no longer win the national title while losing their bowls. Dickey’s first year at UT was also the SEC’s first year without the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, and the Tulane Green Wave would leave two years later.

Now, Heupel is about to be part of the SEC expanding to 16 teams by adding the Texas Longhorns and his alma mater, the Oklahoma Sooners. There’s also talk of the College Football Playoff expanding to 12 teams, so just like the 1960s, the postseason is changing.

These similarities would be enough, but then there’s the fact that Heupel and Dickey both played quarterbacks for Power Five schools, Dickey an SEC school in the Florida Gators and Heupel a future SEC school in OU. Oh, and they took over at a time when the Alabama Crimson Tide were in the midst of a dynasty under their respective legendary coaches Bear Bryant and Nick Saban.

Simply put, Heupel looks like he could be Tennessee football’s new Doug Dickey. If his success matches Dickey’s, he could also leave UT for his alma mater. That’s way down the road, though. The situations they inherited, the new flare they brought in and the changes to the landscape can’t be ignored. Both also generated high morale their first seasons despite them being mediocre.