Tuesday AM Update: Sources tell FootballScoop Owings has accepted the job.
Derek Owings worked previously with Josh Heupel.
The University of Tennessee’s sixth-year head coach is seeking to create a reunion.
Several sources tell FootballScoop that Heupel is targeting Owings to become the Tennessee Vols’ new director of strength and conditioning for the football program on Rocky Top.
The two previously worked together during the 2018 season at the University of Central Florida.
Multiple sources confirmed to FootballScoop that Heupel and Owings had spoken directly about the Vols’ top strength coach vacancy.
Indiana previously rewarded Owings with a contract that paid him more than $900,000 annually; sources said Tennessee was prepared to take Owings “well above $1 million.”
This marks the second consecutive winter that Owings is in extreme demand, and sources tell FootballScoop that Indiana is motivated to retain its award-winning strength guru.
Owings is the reigning FootballScoop Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year as voted by his peers and presented by Teamworks.
It was just last year that USC’s football program sought Owings after the Trojans fired Bennie Wylie, also a former Tennessee Vols strength coach among other stops.
Heupel fired/elected not to renew the contract of strength coach Kurt Schmidt in recent weeks despite several years with Schmidt. The Vols were panned for their lack of physicality at different times during the 2025 season and blew a fourth-quarter lead in their Music City Bowl loss to Illinois.
Tennessee closed its season on a two-game losing streak, blown out at home by Vanderbilt and the postseason loss, and saw Heupel fire almost all of his defensive staff, including coordinator Tim Banks after Banks was awarded a lucrative extension after the 2024 season.
Owings has coached the past six seasons alongside award-winning Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti, who brought Owings with him to the Hoosiers from James Madison after the 2023 season.
In addition to Central Florida, James Madison and Indiana, Owings also has strength coach experience at Utah State and Texas Tech.
He’s a former collegiate football player at both the Football Bowls and Football Championship subdivision levels. After beginning his career at Eastern Michigan, Owings finished up under Bobby Lamb at Mercer. He earned All-Southern Conference honors under Lamb during his time with the Mercer program.
Indiana captured the program’s first-ever national title and won just the second 12-team College Football Playoff Monday night. The Hoosiers dispatched No. 10-seeded Miami inside the Hurricanes’ home venue, Hard Rock Stadium, in the culmination of the Playoffs.
Indiana defeated Alabama, Oregon and the Hurricanes en route to the title after it upset Ohio State last month in the Big Ten Conference Championship and earned the top overall seed in the CFP and the accompanying bye.
