Tennessee will officially play in-state program Tennessee Tech as its 2016 FCS opponent on Nov. 5, 2016, Tech confirmed via its official website on Tuesday afternoon.
“This is another in a long list of these games for us,” Golden Eagle head coach Watson Brown said in a release from TTU. “It’s like Oregon and TCU and Wisconsin, and some others. It seems like Mark (Director of Athletics Mark Wilson) waits until a team gets really good and he schedules them. By the time we play them next year, they’ll probably be Top 10.”
The Vols and Golden Eagles have met five times in history (every year between 1947-1951), but haven’t played since then – making it a 65-year hiatus between appearances. Tech is located approximately an hour and a half west of Knoxville in Cookeville, Tenn.
Tennessee is also scheduled to participate in the Battle at Bristol against Virginia Tech on Sept. 10, 2016. The Vols will, tentatively, open the schedule against Appalachian State and are also expected to face Ohio in 2016.
SEC home games will be Florida, Kentucky, Alabama and Missouri, with road trips to Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, Georgia and South Carolina on the schedule as well. The official schedule confirming all these games with dates will be released later in 2015.
