UA head football coach Mike Stoops continues to bring an Oklahoma flare to his Wildcat team by hiring former Sooner quarterback Josh Heupel as the UA's new tight ends coach yesterday.

Heupel fills the vacancy left by Steve Spurrier Jr., who joined his father's program at South Carolina in December.

Heupel, the 2000 Heisman trophy runner-up, worked as an offensive graduate assistant in 2004 at his alma mater. In his playing days, he helped lead the Sooners to a national championship win over Florida State in the 2000 Orange Bowl. Prior to returning to Norman, Okla., to coach at the University of Oklahoma, Heupel spent one year with both the Green Bay Packers and the Barcelona Dragons after being selected in the sixth round by the Miami Dolphins in the 2001 NFL Draft.

"We're very excited to have Josh join us here, and he'll be an immediate asset to our staff," said Stoops in a press release. "Having both played and coached at Oklahoma, he is familiar with our system and what we want to do on the field. He has won a national championship as a player and coached in the national championship game last year. He knows what it takes to be successful on a high level and how to teach that to our players."

Heupel went 20-5 as a starting quarterback at OU and passed for 7,456 yards and 53 touchdowns. In 1999, he threw for a school-record 3,850 yards and 33 touchdowns in 12 games. Heupel left Oklahoma ranked among the school's top passers in yards, completions and touchdown passes despite only playing at OU for two years. He began his collegiate football career at Weber State University and also attended Snow Junior College in Ephraim, Utah, before transferring to Oklahoma.