Josh Heupel became the 25th head coach to lead Tennessee football for a full season last year. There have been 27 people coach a game for the Vols in history, but only 25 of them did it on a full-time basis. Jim Chaney finishing the 2012 season for the Vols and Brady Hoke finishing the 2017 season don’t really count.
Anyway, UT’s first head coach ever took over in 1899. The Vols were led by W.B. Stokely during the lost years as a student coach in 1894 and 1895, but those were unofficial seasons in which they didn’t play varsity ball. There wasn’t a team in 1898, 1917, 1918 or 1943, and in 1891, 1892, 1896 and 1897, the Vols were player-led.
All other 125 teams had a head coach, but who did the best job? Well, that’s what this will break down. Mostly based on overall success while they were there but to a lesser degree what they inherited and what they left, this is a ranking of all 25 Tennessee football head coaches in history.
See where Josh Heupel stands in this ranking of all Tennessee football Volunteers head coaches in history.
4-11-3 (0-8-2 SIAA)
This isn’t a title anybody wants to have, but James DePree earned it. Now, to be fair, it was in the height of the darkest days of the program, but at the same time, you have to hold it against DePree. He joined the Vols after two years as a fullback for the Michigan Wolverines in 1903 and 1904, winning back to back national championships.
Arriving on Rocky Top in 1905, he inherited a team that had suffered losing records in 1903 and 1904, so he would seem to get some of a break based on what he inherited. However, he plunged it to a level way worse, which is what puts him down here. DePree went 3-5-1 his first year, and although he started 2-0, it was all downhill after that.
The Vols lost five of their final six games. A year later, after a 1-0 start, they lost six of their final eight games, tying the two others, so he went an abysmal 1-6-2. To be fair, DePree started the school’s first basketball team in 1906, but Tennessee football under him was an abject failure.