Josh Heupel has hired Indiana’s Derek Owings as his new Tennessee football strength and conditioning coach, Knox News confirmed, after the Hoosiers won the national title.
Indiana beat Miami 27-21 in the College Football Playoff national title game on Jan. 19. UT is expected to announce Owings’ hire later on Jan. 20.
Owings spent the past two seasons as director of athletic performance at Indiana, where he helped coach Curt Cignetti transform the Hoosiers into a powerhouse. Indiana was 3-9 before they arrived in Bloomington. It went to the College Football Playoff in 2024 and won the CFP national championship.
Owings worked for Cignetti at James Madison as strength coach from 2020-23. He also worked at Utah State (2016-18), UCF (2018) and Texas Tech (2019-20).
Owings was the UCF assistant strength coach at UCF in Heupel’s first season as head coach there in 2018.
It’s a significant hire for Heupel, whose team was outplayed from a physicality standpoint in the 2025 season. The Vols lost all five games against FBS teams with a winning record.
Owings will arrive at Tennessee soon. UT classes started on Jan. 20, and offseason workouts will follow.
Owings replaces Kurt Schmidt, who was not retained under an expiring contract. Schmidt had worked with Heupel for the past nine years at three different schools. He was at Missouri in 2017 when Heupel was the offensive coordinator there. He was Heupel’s head strength coach at UCF in 2018-20 and at Tennessee in 2021-25.
Adam Sparks is the Tennessee football beat reporter. Email adam.sparks@knoxnews.com. X, formerly known as Twitter@AdamSparks. Support strong local journalism by subscribing atknoxnews.com/subscribe.
Get the latest news and insight on SEC football by subscribing to the SEC Unfiltered newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tennessee football hires Indiana’s Derek Owings as strength coach
