Tennessee football: Smart money is on the Vols +31.5 against Georgia

Tennessee football comes into Saturday’s game against the Georgia Bulldogs as a 31.5 point underdog. Smart money is on the Vols.

The 2018 Tennessee football team opens as 31.5-point underdog Saturday to the Georgia Bulldogs. Yeah, I can’t believe it either. It’s a sad day that the Vols are a 31.5-point underdog to anyone in football. We are talking about Tennessee football, not Vanderbilt for crying out loud!

However, there are some positives for such a high spread. History shows Georgia won’t cover.

Since 1992, Georgia has only beat the Vols by more than 30 points one time, which was the 41-0 victory last season. The other two blowouts came in 2003 and 2010; the Vols lost by 27 points in both games.

Unlike Florida, Tennessee has played Georgia tough despite the disparity in the rankings. Since 2000, the Bulldogs have been ranked 14 times for the annual meeting; the Vols won five of those games. In fact, in four of those wins, the Vols were underdogs. Maybe not 31.5-point underdogs, but underdogs nonetheless.

But, what is the margin of victory? Can Georgia really win by over 30 points two straight seasons?

Since 1992 neither team has beat the other one by more than 30 points two seasons in a row. Only the Vols have had back-to-back seasons with 20-point wins.

Georgia hasn’t been close. They beat the Vols by 27 in 2003, but Tennessee won by five the next season. 2010, was the other 27-point victory, but the Dawgs followed that up in 2011 with an eight-point win.

Since 2000, Georgia has a 12.9 point margin of victory against the Vols. The past five Bulldogs wins have been even closer with a 12.4 point margin of victory. The 41-0 game from last season skew the numbers. If you throw that game out of the series, the past five wins would only be a 9.6 point margin of victory.

It gets even better for the Vols if you look at the recent victories by the Bulldogs in Athens. The margin of victory falls to ten points. For some reason, the Vols love playing in Athens. Of course, everyone remembers the most recent success in 2016. But, don’t forget 2014, was only a three-point game.

I’m not proposing to take the Tennessee moneyline +8000, although that would be a huge payout if the Vols could somehow come out with the win. We have to be real with ourselves and understand the Vols aren’t on that level, yet. However, the positive is, history says Vols keep it a lot closer than the 31.5-point spread suggests and should be a positive for Volnation.