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Tennessee Coaching History
By Adam Spencer
Last Updated:
Tennessee has a long history of success in the world of college football. The Vols have won 6 national championships over the course of their program’s history, with 3 different head coaches leading them to the apex of the sport.
The Vols are slowly climbing their way back to achieving national relevance year in and year out under Josh Heupel, who led the Vols to an Orange Bowl victory in 2022 and a College Football Playoff appearance in 2024. He’s started better than any other Tennessee football hire since Phillip Fulmer, who we’ll talk about more further down the page.
From Heupel and Fulmer to Doug Dickey, General Robert Neyland and Johnny Majors, let’s take a full look at Tennessee football’s coaching history.
Tennessee Coaching History
As you can see, a few big-time names have led the Vols across the years. Some who left both positive and negative impacts on the Tennessee football program.
The Vols were a national power fairly consistently from the 1920s (when Robert Neyland arrived) until about 2000, though Phillip Fulmer still had some good years in the early 2000s as well. Since then, things have gone downhill.
The Vols have employed 5 head coaches and a pair of interim coaches from 2008 until the present – Lane Kiffin, Derek Dooley, Butch Jones, Jeremy Pruitt and Josh Heupel. With the exception of Dooley, you’ll find Tennessee fans don’t look too kindly upon these men – especially Kiffin. Before landing at Ole Miss, Kiffin coached the Vols for 1 season before jetting off for USC – his dream job.
The winningest head coach in Tennessee history is, of course, Robert Neyland.
Robert Neyland
Robert Neyland built Tennessee football into what it is today. He’s the winningest and most accomplished head coach in Tennessee history and built the Vols into one of the best football programs of all time.
Neyland landed in Knoxville in 1926 after graduating from Army West Point. He served in France during WWI and accepted Tennessee’s head coaching job alongside his position as a professor of military science for the university after 1 year as an assistant.
He wasted no time, either. Neyland won 35 of his first 40 games, 4 of which were ties. From 1926 to 1932 Neyland’s Vols lost just 2 games.
Neyland won 173 games at Tennessee and delivered 4 national championships before retiring as coach in 1952. He stayed on as AD for Tennessee until his death in 1962. Shortly before his death, Neyland drew up the plans for major renovations to Tennessee’s stadium, which was named in his honor upon completion.
Phillip Fulmer
Phillip Fulmer is the 2nd winningest head coach in Tennessee history and continued the prolonged success that Johnny Majors brought to the program from 1977-1992.
Fulmer coached the Vols from 1992-2008 and won 151 games with 52 losses, about half of which came in the mid-to-late 2000s. He won a pair of SEC conference titles (1997, 1998) and 6 divisional titles.
Fulmer’s Vols also won the first BCS Championship, downing Florida State in 1998 (technically 1999) to win the Vols’ 6th title in school history.
After his stint as head coach Tennessee hired Fulmer to be the Vols’ athletics director in 2017, a hire that was a bit of a disaster from the start. He was fired in 2017 and replaced by Danny White.
Fulmer was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame (see above picture) in 2012.
Adam is a daily fantasy sports (DFS) and sports betting expert. A 2012 graduate of the University of Missouri, Adam now covers all 16 SEC football teams. He is the director of DFS, evergreen and newsletter content across all Saturday Football brands.
