With another week of college football in the books, the 2021 bowl season is closer than ever before.
The Tennessee Volunteers, sitting at 4-4 after the bye week, do look to be on pace to become bowl eligible by the end of the regular season. With six wins needed to become eligible for a bowl, Tennessee will have four opportunities to find those two coveted wins over the remainder of the season. Going off of the eye test, that does look like a feasible goal for the Tennessee football team, and the analytics agree.
According to ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI), Tennessee has a greater than 50 percent chance to win in three of its remaining four games. ESPN gives Tennessee a 51.3 percent chance to knock off Kentucky on the road this Saturday night. Additionally, the FPI gives the Vols a 93.5 percent chance to win against South Alabama on homecoming, and a 97.5 percent chance against Vanderbilt in the regular-season finale.
With the Vols widely expected to reach six wins in Josh Heupel’s inaugural season in Knoxville, most bowl projections do have Tennessee somewhere in the bunch.
ESPN’s Mark Schlabach and Kyle Bonagura have gone in different directions for Tennessee’s projection. In what may be the most fascinating projection of the week, Schlabach has Tennessee playing Heupel’s former team, UCF (5-3), in the Birmingham Bowl on Dec. 28.
“After helping Scott Frost guide the Knights to a 13-0 record in 2017, Heupel led his teams to a 28-8 record in three seasons, winning 22 in the first two,” Schlabach wrote. “It’s been an up-and-down maiden season for him at Tennessee, and facing his former team probably isn’t how he’d want to spend the postseason.”
Bonagura has Tennessee in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, which has been a familiar projection for the Vols in the last few weeks. Although, what hasn’t been widely seen, is the projected opponent. Bonagura is projecting Tennessee to take on Miami in the game, set to take place on Dec. 30 in North Carolina.
Next up is Bleacher Report, which has Tennessee taking on Kansas State (5-3) in the Texas Bowl. With only one ranked team remaining on the schedule, the Wildcats are expected to get to six wins fairly easily. In addition, the Texas Bowl will take place on Jan. 4.
CBS Sports, Sporting News, and Yahoo Sports all have Tennessee booked for Nashville. Although each is projecting Tennessee in the Music City Bowl, it is against three different opponents, respectively. CBS Sports has Tennessee taking on Minnesota (6-2) in the Music City Bowl, while Sporting News has the Vols against Iowa (6-2), who has been ranked as high as number two in the nation this year. Lastly, Yahoo Sports has the Vols squaring off against Wisconsin (5-3) in the game on Dec. 30.
The Tennessee football team will look to become one step closer to bowl eligibility this Saturday night. The Vols will take on No. 18 Kentucky under the lights in Lexington.
