Mid-November & Meaningful Football

If you’re looking for an orange-tinted case for the 12-team playoff, Saturday is about as good as it gets: #13 Tennessee at #14 Missouri would serve as a play-in opportunity of sorts, championship implications for both teams. It would be one of the most meaningful games Tennessee has ever played in mid-November, so often headlined by Vanderbilt and Kentucky.

But you also don’t have to wait a year for high stakes football two weeks before Thanksgiving.

Two things have happened in Knoxville the last three years:

• The Georgia game was moved to November, ensuring a late-season opportunity for a meaningful win. Georgia’s own ascent as potential three-peat champs added all kinds of obvious fuel here.
• Josh Heupel’s arrival has led to Tennessee going 25-10 in his first 35 games after going 78-82 from 2008-2020. The Vols are in the Top 15 with three weeks to go for the second year in a row. The last time that happened in back-to-back seasons was 2003-2004.

Putting Tennessee’s own success aside for a moment, consider the rarity of the big mid-November game around here. Since the AP poll expanded to a Top 25 in 1989, the Vols have faced a ranked opponent in the last three weeks of the season just 13 times. One of those was the December 2001 clash between Tennessee and Florida, postponed from September 11. Two more came in the covid season. And one other came after Butch Jones was let go in 2017, when Brady Hoke led the Vols against #20 LSU.

That leaves just nine games built into Tennessee’s schedule that brought this kind of opportunity this late in the season:

• Two years ago, the Vols fought but fell to #1 Georgia 41-17.
• In 2018, maybe what was ultimately the biggest win for Jeremy Pruitt, 24-7 over #12 Kentucky. The Vols moved to 5-5 and had to beat either Missouri or Vanderbilt to get bowl eligible, but lost to both by a combined 58 points.
• Missouri again in 2014, the eventual East champs after a 29-21 win in Knoxville. The #19 Tigers were the first of six one-possession losses in an 18-6 run from November 2014 to October 2016 after Josh Dobbs became the full-time starter. Ever heard of him?
• A pair of out-of-our-league losses to Auburn in 2013 and at Arkansas in 2011, two teams who finished in the top five.
• In 2006, with Erik Ainge still recovering from injury (and a week after losing to #13 LSU in the final seconds to start the last four weeks of the season), the Vols fell 31-14 at #11 Arkansas.
• The vaunted 1998 Arkansas game.
• The vaunted SP+ world champions of Knoxville in 1993, who smoked #13 Louisville 45-10.
• A gritty 22-13 win at #15 Ole Miss for Johnny Majors in 1990 to keep the Vols on pace for an eventual SEC Championship.

We’ve been far more accustomed to finding meaning in bowl eligibility this late in the season in the last 15 or so years. Now, it’s the first of two Top 15 opponents in the last three weeks of the season, with the Vols right alongside.

When Tennessee and Missouri kick-off at 3:30, everything will still be on the table. You know by now the one path to Atlanta: Vols over Missouri, Ole Miss over Georgia, Vols over Georgia next Saturday. That path, while narrow, could still lead to the college football playoff. If the most important question is, “Are we in the hunt?”, this team has positioned themselves to say yes, even in the last year of four-team world.

Georgia’s credit is also Tennessee’s opportunity: even if the Dawgs secure the SEC East on Saturday night, you’ll find no shortage of meaning in Neyland Stadium next week. Aside from playing for a potential New Year’s Six opportunity – the first time the Vols went back-to-back in the BCS or NY6 since 1998-1999 – a win against this Georgia run would be one of the biggest regular season victories Tennessee has enjoyed in our lifetimes.

The schedule is opportunistic; maybe there will be more Novembers like this going forward.

But Tennessee has been the biggest factor in its own equation, as it should be. The opponents are big. But the Vols have been big enough to make these moments matter for all involved.