Once upon a time, Vanderbilt was chalked up as a guaranteed “W” on Tennessee’s football schedule every year. From 1976 through 2011, the Vols only last to the Commodores twice, and from 1938 till 2011, Tennessee only lost seven times in 74 meetings to Vanderbilt.
But things have changed recently in the annual series.
Ever since 2012, Vanderbilt has turned the tide in the rivalry. The Commodores have won four of the last six meetings between the two in-state schools, and they’ve often won by a lot. Three of Vanderbilt’s four wins over the last six years have come by multiple scores.
Last season, Tennessee went into their contest against Vanderbilt looking to avoid historic futility. UT had fired head coach Butch Jones two weekends before, and interim head coach Brady Hoke was tasked with keeping Tennessee from going 0-8 in SEC play for the first time in program history.
Instead, Vanderbilt routed the Vols 42-24 in front of a home crowd in Neyland Stadium.
Sophomore offensive lineman Marcus Tatum remembers that game, and he hasn’t forgotten how he felt afterwards.
“When I was a freshman, they were dancing on the field, and it was pretty embarrassing,” Tatum said on Monday. “I never want to feel that feeling again.”
Tatum hails from Ormond, Florida, so he wasn’t as familiar with how heated the Tennessee-Vanderbilt rivalry can get. But he learned quickly in his first season with the Vols.
“I wasn’t really familiar with it when I got here until my first game against them,” Tatum added, “and I just saw, like, the philosophy of the game and just the speed of the game changed completely when these two teams played.”
But one Vol player who is intimately familiar with the in-state rivalry is fifth-year senior Todd Kelly Jr.
Kelly grew up in Knoxville and around Tennessee football. He watched the Vols dominate the Commodores growing up, but as he was starting to get recruited, the rivalry started to change. While he was in high school, Kelly was invited over to Nashville to tour Vanderbilt’s campus on a recruiting visit. He was taken aback by all the outward disdain that the Commodores showed towards the Vols.
“Everything I saw that had Tennessee on it, they had the Power T upside down,” Kelly stated. “That kind of tells you how much respect they have for this program. I think I’m gonna just explain to my teammates just how important this game is, really how they don’t respect us, and just how important it is for us to win this ball game.”
Tennessee hasn’t beaten Vanderbilt since 2015. There are only 17 scholarship players on the Vols’ roster who were on the team the last time UT defeated the Commodores. Every other scholarship player on Tennessee’s roster has never experienced a win over Vanderbilt.
This year, there’s a lot at stake for both schools. Both teams are currently 5-6 on the year, and a win would earn one of them an automatic bowl berth. The loser will have to hope that enough teams in the FBS don’t get six wins and that their APR score would be high enough to get them into a bowl with a 5-7 record.
Tatum and Kelly want to avenge the “pretty embarrassing” losses the Vols have suffered at the hands of Vanderbilt. And if they can do that this year, they’ll get the added bonus of making it back to the postseason for the first time since 2016.
