A mid-November cupcake game isn’t all that exciting, but it’s an important one for this 2025 Tennessee team. The Volunteers are coming off of a loss to Oklahoma, once again one where the mistakes piled up and Tennessee let a winnable football game slip away. Now with three losses, their College Football Playoff hopes are virtually extinguished.
So what’s left to play for? That’s become the problem in college football these days — playoff or bust. Tennessee still has a chance at nine wins and one of the top bowl games on the slate. The Citrus Bowl is probably your best case scenario, followed by options in Jacksonville and Tampa. Bowl games still matter, just as we saw to close the 2023 season. Nico Iamaleava got his first start for the Volunteers in the matchup, steamrolling Iowa and creating some very real momentum for the 2024 season — one that ended with a CFP berth.
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“Man, this is our next opportunity to play,” Heupel said of what he wants to see this week. “There’s a lot of areas that we’ve got to get better in. Got good work in in the middle part of last week, and this is our next opportunity. What happens after, that’s after. You can’t control any of that, so the same thing that we talk about consistently in our program all phases of the year – control and win right now.”
Even more important here are the two rivalry games left on the schedule following this week against New Mexico State. Josh Heupel has a chance to go beat Florida in Gainesville for the first time since 2003. As we know now, Tennessee won’t face the Gators again until 2027. They won’t travel back to The Swamp until 2029.
Getting over that hump would be a nice way to end this chapter of Tennessee-Florida, and it would certainly spare Heupel plenty of embarrassment and outrage from the fanbase should they lose yet again down there. Florida is just downright bad, coming off of a horrible blowout loss to Kentucky in Lexington. That’s one Tennessee needs to go get.
And of course beyond that, Vanderbilt will be coming into town to close the regular season, very likely looking for a spot in the playoff. I’m not sure anyone on the planet thought Tennessee would be playing spoiler to the Commodores in November, but here we are. Diego Pavia has had an outstanding season, but his comments from the summer will provide Tennessee’s locker room with plenty of motivation.
All of that is on the horizon over the next three weeks. The question for this Saturday remains — how will Tennessee respond with championship aspirations off the table?
