Josh Heupel, the 27th head coach in Tennessee football history, is introduced by Danny White, vice chancellor and director of athletics at the University of Tennessee.
I’m glad you everyone could make it here today. It’s just been a dizzying five days, I believe, since I started the job. I’m thrilled to be at Tennessee and am looking forward to today. Let me extend a warm welcome to Josh, and let you get to know his amazing family—Dawn, Hannah, and Jace.
They seem to be in a similar situation as my family, one that is undergoing change, now that we have upended their entire world. We are thrilled to have you all here as members of the Tennessee family and are looking forward to developing this place going forward.
I had a fantastic morning meeting with the staff. They are eager to start working and, as far as I can tell, really excited. We conducted a comprehensive nationwide search. Since I’m employing the guy I’ve been working with for the past three years, I realize that seems weird.
To be honest, I was attempting to avoid hiring the UCF head coach. I say this with all due respect to Tennessee, but I also love UCF and detest the disruption this is creating for the student-athletes there.
That’s the challenging aspect about collegiate athletics, but we made sure to interview every candidate. Thank you to all of the candidates. You would be surprised at how many of them we spoke with—I won’t tell you—and how there were no leaks until last night.
In my career as an AD, I have only been involved in two leaks, both of which occurred within the previous week. That one is something we need to focus on and solve here.
Leave a Reply