Over the last five years, Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel has returned the Volunteers to an elite football team. With that growth has come a lot of notoriety, which continues to blossom as the Vols hold onto a top-25 ranking.
However, with great power comes great responsibility... and great pressure.
Because of the onslaught of head coach firings this season, Heupel's name has repeatedly been mentioned for a few of the job openings across the country, including with the Florida Gators, Arkansas Razorbacks, LSU Tigers, and Penn State Nittany Lions.
One USA Today writer, Blake Toppmeyer, urged Heupel to take advantage of his current popularity and take a big-time job while it's still available, specifically the one with the Nittany Lions
"Penn State needs offense. Penn State needs quarterback development. Penn State needs a coach who might occasionally beat a chief rival," Toppmeyer wrote. "That’s Heupel’s theme music!"
Will Josh Heupel leave the Tennessee Volunteers?
While the prospect of coaching at a powerhouse program like Penn State is undeniably alluring, Heupel has a lot to consider before jumping at the possible opportunity.
For starters, just before this season kicked off, Heupel signed a one-year extension, stretching his contract with the Vols through 2030. So, if he decided to leave Tennessee before the end of the regular season, he would owe the program $8 million.
It isn't a massive amount of money, especially for someone who is currently making $9 million per year, but still, who wants to cough up that much cash just to take another job?
On the other hand, before taking the job with the Volunteers, Heupel didn't have any real ties to Tennessee. He's a native of South Dakota and played college football for the Oklahoma Sooners, who just defeated him and the Volunteers. He played for Miami and Green Bay in the NFL before starting his coaching career in 2004.
After taking a Graduate Assistant role at Oklahoma, he moved on to Arizona, then back to Oklahoma, then Utah State, and then Missouri. He took his first-ever head coaching job at UCF in 2018 before taking over the program in Knoxville in 2021.
At the end of the day, while Penn State might be an enticing job, there is no real reason for Heupel to leave, unless he continues to fall just short of glory with the Vols (in which case the Tennessee crowd would grow a little restless), or if the Nittany Lions offer up the big bucks.