Breaking Down Tennessee's 2024 SEC Football Schedule
The SEC decided to keep an eight-game conference schedule for 2024, leaving season beyond that up in the air. This involved no divisions, which meant big question marks regarding what opponents each school would have. Traditionally, teams played their divisional opponents back and forth between home and road. They had their one cross-division rival (Alabama in the case of Tennessee) and one extra cross-division game based on a rotation. On Wednesday evening, the SEC released the opponents for this new format in 2024 (just the teams, not the dates).
For Tennessee, the home opponents in 2024 will be Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, and Mississippi State, while the road opponents will be Oklahoma, Vanderbilt, Arkansas, and Georgia. There are definitely no major surprises here. We expected the Vols to face Alabama at home and Vanderbilt on the road. What we didn’t know, though, was which former SEC East schools would be left off of the schedule. It turned out to be Missouri and South Carolina. These are two schools that Tennessee would not consider itself big rivals with, so Tennessee fans should be satisfied. Georgia and Kentucky staying on there make more sense, as does the presence of Florida.
As for the new teams, Tennessee was expected to go to Starkville in 2024 based on the rotation, but now the Bulldogs will come to Knoxville. Tennessee will immediately face a new member in Oklahoma. All SEC schools will play either Oklahoma or Texas in 2024, and for Tennessee, it will be the Sooners in Norman. The teams have only faced off four times, with Oklahoma most recently sweeping a home-and-home in the 2014 and 2015 seasons. This time, Tennessee will look for better luck as they face off against the Sooners and navigate the rest of a newly-worked SEC schedule.
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