Texas and Tennessee will meet for the first time as SEC rivals in Week 4, and the spotlight will be bright from the opening whistle. The Longhorns and Volunteers are set for an 11 a.m. CDT kickoff at Neyland Stadium on September 26, with ABC carrying the game nationally.
It will be Texas’ first trip to Rocky Top and the first time these programs have played since 1968. By then, both teams could be sitting at 3-0.
Texas has UTSA at DKR Stadium before heading to Knoxville, while Tennessee faces Kennesaw State, a second-year Conference USA program, before its date with the Longhorns. Texas is likely to arrive ranked No. 1 in the country.
Both teams already picked up notable non-conference wins in Week 2. Texas pulled off a 24-23 comeback over then-No. 1 Ohio State, while Tennessee handled Georgia Tech in a 45-24 win.
The game has also put College GameDay in an interesting spot. ESPN has not announced its Week 4 destination yet, and Texas-Tennessee got a lift from a pair of results that weakened other candidates.
Oregon at USC looked like a natural fit before Oregon’s shocking loss as a three-touchdown favorite to Oklahoma State in Stillwater. The Ducks also barely got past Boise State in Week 1, hardly looking like a dominant defensive team under Dan Lanning.
Oklahoma’s trip to Georgia had been another strong possibility, but the Sooners’ loss to Michigan at the “Big House” knocked that matchup down a peg too.
There’s also the Manning angle, and ESPN knows how to lean into that. Arch Manning will be playing at Peyton Manning’s old stomping grounds, and Peyton and Eli Manning both work for the Worldwide Leader in Sports. That gives the network another storyline if it wants to play up the family connection, even if GameDay ends up elsewhere.
Arch won’t get the chance to visit Ole Miss, Eli’s alma mater, in Oxford this season, though the Rebels will come to Austin on October 24. Still, there may not be a bigger family spotlight on the schedule than Texas heading to East Tennessee.
And of course, there’s the question everyone will ask: who does Peyton pull for?
"I love my university, my alma mater. Pull for them unconditionally ...
But nothing's more important than my family, and when you have a nephew playing, I pull very hard for him every single Saturday," Peyton said of the matchup during the Manning Passing Academy this summer. "So that's pretty much a no-brainer, pulling for your nephew to play well.
But like I said everybody knows pretty strongly where my loyalties lie on all other Saturdays. The University of Tennessee."
If Tennessee can win a tight, high-scoring game, that would probably suit Peyton just fine. Whether College GameDay wants the family angle, or heads to LA or Between the Hedges instead, is still to be determined.
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For Texas, the takeaway is less about a surprise than a reminder of where the Longhorns now live in the sport. The report places them among the teams operating at or near the top of the spending board, in the same conversation as the Buckeyes and Ducks, which helps explain why the stakes around roster building have become so high. The broader question, though, is whether that level of spending can translate into the kind of playoff consistency the biggest checkbooks are clearly chasing. [Read more 🡒]