Tennessee Vols head coach Josh Heupel threw a jab at the national media during SEC Media Days

Tennessee Vols head coach Josh Heupel threw a jab at the national media during an appearance on WNML at SEC Media Days last week. 

Ahead of Heupel's appearance at SEC Media Days in Atlanta, the fifth-year Vols head coach was ranked by ESPN's Bill Connelly (via SP+ rankings) as the No. 2 head coach in college football. 

From ESPN: Maybe the name that jumps out the most above is Josh Heupel. I think anyone would consider him a very good coach (he's 37-15 overall), but he doesn't exactly draw any "best in the game?" hype. He benefited from a positive situation at UCF, where he inherited a rising program from Scott Frost in 2019 and produced big ratings in his first couple of years on the job. But his average rating at Tennessee has been a solid 14.0 as well; the Volunteers had been up and down for years, but he has produced four top-20 SP+ ratings in a row and two top-10s in the past three years. He might not be getting the credit he deserves for that.

Heupel was asked about that ranking during his appearance on WNML, and he took a swipe at the way the national media typically ranks head coaches. 

"Sometimes guys that talk the best get rated the best," said Heupel. "But I, like our fan base, care only about one thing -- that's being number one."

Some of the coaches who "talk the best" in the SEC are Georgia's Kirby Smart, LSU's Brian Kelly, and Ole Miss' Lane Kiffin. Each of those three coaches are routinely ranked above Heupel (Smart, to be fair, deserves to be ranked at the top of most coaching lists). 

I doubt Heupel actually cares whether he's ranked No. 1 or not. Instead, his comment about being No. 1 is likely a reference to the fact that coaches who have won a national championship are usually at the top of head coach rankings.