Heupels firing a tough ending to watch
Since he arrived back at Oklahoma in 2004, I've asked Josh Heupel hundreds of questions about coaching.
The last question I ever asked Josh Heupel as a member of the OU coaching staff, he didn't answer.
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Standing in a noisy hallway in the bowels of the Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium, I asked Heupel, as an assistant coach at Oklahoma, my final question: Are you concerned at all about your future?
Heupel continued answering the previous question and ignored my harsh question.
I didn't re-ask it.
Even though I wanted his response, I didn't want to re-ask it.
If it was over, I didn't want that to be the way it ended with Heupel at Oklahoma.
***
For me the most ironic thing about Josh Heupel as a coordinator wasn't the difference between his brilliance as a quarterback and his inabilities as an offensive coordinator.
It was that Heupel put everything he could into emulating Bob Stoops.
Heupel talked like Stoops.
He'd been practicing his "Stoops-speak" since he was a player at Oklahoma. Stoops' no-nonsense persona and positive reinforcement worked for Heupel as a player.
So Stoops became Heupel's blueprint for success as a coach too.
But that also meant Heupel built up a wall of double-talk and football clichés that were off-putting to fans and media alike.
Bob Stoops can get away with it. He's a national championship winning coach that has one of the best winning percentages in college football.
Heupel was fine being robotic in the public eye. But the public wasn't always fine with the calculated answers and lack of explanations.
He was just an assistant coach. He wasn't Bob Stoops.
Few were ever let inside to see his true personality. I think that was why it was so easy for fans to call for Heupel's job.
When people see nothing there, they assume nothing is.
They weren't invested in Heupel as a person, because they really knew nothing about him.
***
There were times Heupel let his guard down with me over the years. There were times in camp settings or running into each other on high school fields, where there were no recorders.
I saw a personality few ever got a chance to see.
There were times he was upset at me because we might have been reporting interest in certain quarterbacks when Heupel wanted it known their only real interest was in one guy.
I saw some personality in those instances, because we really got to argue with each other.
There was a time he stopped me as he was walking out of an OU-Texas press conference after a big win.
"You see Cody Thomas threw 7 touchdowns last night?" he half-whispered. "He's pretty good!"
I wish those flashes of personality would have been more numerous for Josh Heupel at Oklahoma.
For all the respect and admiration he has for Mike Leach, you wished Heupel had more stories about Pirates and Geronimo in him. Just something to add some color once in a while.
But publicly, Heupel always emulated Stoops.
***
I wondered how Heupel took it meeting with Bob Stoops last Saturday when he was informed he'd be let go. I'd heard the stories about how he had become withdrawn from the other assistants after the bowl game.
It had to be an earth-shattering experience to be fired by the guy you saw as your mentor.
The coach he modeled himself after.
Stoops had to let him go. But it was the coach he won a national championship for on the field. It was the guy he helped build into a coaching legend just two years into his career.
I don't think there's ever going to be a bigger kick-in-the-gut story than this one in the history of the Bob Stoops era.
Bob could fire his brother Mike. But Mike had his opportunities. He staked his claim in Arizona, had his chance to build a program on his own.
I once asked Heupel about his ultimate goal in coaching. It was shortly after he was named offensive coordinator at Oklahoma. It was one of those few moments where it was just us talking. He was showing some of his personality.
I asked if the ultimate goal was to succeed Bob and be the head coach at Oklahoma.
He grinned, laughed. You could see Josh Heupel daydream just a bit.
"Yeah," he answered. "That would be the ultimate goal."
We went from there to me asking: "Are you concerned about your future?" as the last thing I ever asked him.
I'm glad he didn't answer the question.
I'm still glad I didn't ask it again.
***
It's clear Heupel is going to land on his feet somewhere. Reports surfaced early this week he'd already made a trip out to Utah State.
I do know Heupel will be coaching again.
It's my hope he'll land a FBS coaching gig as an offensive coordinator and be extremely successful.
Getting away from Oklahoma has worked wonders for Brent Venables as a defensive coordinator. Maybe the same will hold true for Heupel.
And maybe he'll start to let his guard down a bit more and let people see his true personality.
A question was asked of Bob Stoops during his season ending press conference Tuesday: "What will you remember most about Josh Heupel?"
That question was asked almost as if Heupel had passed away.
Heupel is 36 years old and counting.
Away from Stoops and the expectations at Oklahoma, this is finally a chance for Heupel to discover his own voice as a football coach.
Hopefully it will be a long time before a reporter ever asks him again: "Are you concerned about your future?"