BREAKING: SEC Announces Tennessee's Two Additional Opponents

The SEC officially announced Auburn and Texas A&M as Tennessee’s additional opponents for the 10-game conference only season on Friday — making the Vols schedule one of the toughest in the entire country. In addition to Auburn and Texas A&M, the Vols will also have to play divisional rivals Florida and Georgia, as well as cross-divisional rival Alabama; leaving Jeremy Pruitt in an incredibly tough position during his third season in Knoxville.

While it was previously reported that the SEC would simply take each team’s next two rotational opponents and move them up one season, the league reportedly made the decision based on a strength of schedule model instead. As for the other big names in the SEC East, Florida added Arkansas and Texas A&M and Georgia added Mississippi State and Arkansas to their schedule.

Fans have been speculating about the additional match-ups since the SEC first announced it would move to a conference-only schedule in July. Back then, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey made it clear that they would take their time in regards to making a decision about the schedule, as they recognized that it could completely alter the season.

“I know our colleagues in the ACC were able to put out the match-ups quickly, and obviously (there are) some different dynamics there,” explained Sankey during an appearance on the Paul Finebaum Show. “Our two other colleague conferences that made announcements earlier in July took a bit of time to make their announcement, in fact, we’re still waiting. So, we just want to make sure that we walk through what is a really difficult decision on altering the season, and then we’ll work towards finalizing exactly that format and be ready to go. I think in short order, with that information.”

The conference will reportedly announce the full schedule with the dates the match-ups will be played on sometime next week. The season is currently scheduled to begin at the end of September, with the SEC Championship Game being set for December 19th.

Other Conference Match-Ups: