Tennessee football already has a line open for the Battle at Bristol. The Volunteers are favored by 11 against the Virginia Tech Hokies.
The game is already a sellout, tickets are going for ridiculous prices online, and Las Vegas has already put a spread out on the game.
The Battle at Bristol can’t get more hyped for the Vols and Hokies.
But according to the oddsmakers, the game is not expected to be as exciting as the hype behind it. Tennessee football is favored by 11 in Southpoint Casino’s opening line for the game.
To be fair, this was expected. The Vols are entering the season with a ton of expectations as a Top 25 program while the Hokies are in their first year under new head coach Justin Fuente, who is trying to re-establish the program following Frank Beamer’s retirement.
For many Vols fans, sadly, the most excitement behind the game stems from the fact that it’s not a non-conference game they should lose. Tennessee has struggled severely in non-conference big regular season games for nearly a decade.
Over the past 10 years, the Vols lost a non-conference regular season game seven times. Ironically in 2011, one of the three seasons they went undefeated in non-conference play, their toughest team was against Butch Jones’s Cincinnati Bearcats.
Tennessee will enter the Battle at Bristol expecting a win. In this case, a loss would be disastrous, while a win would simply mean the season is on the right track.
Nothing big would come out of it other than that. The game itself, however, is still exciting.