Tennessee football: Vols greatest win vs. every current and former SEC opponent

6 Dec 1997: Jamal Lewis #31 of Tennessee leaps over a pile of players for a touchdown during the Volunteers 30-29 win over Auburn in the SEC Championship at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia.
6 Dec 1997: Jamal Lewis #31 of Tennessee leaps over a pile of players for a touchdown during the Volunteers 30-29 win over Auburn in the SEC Championship at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Photo by Andy Lyons /Allsport
Photo by Andy Lyons /Allsport

Tennessee football has beaten everybody in the Southeastern Conference at least once. These are the Volunteers’ best victories over each opponent.

There are currently 14 members in the SEC, and two FBS schools are former members along with a current NCAA Division III school. And Tennessee football has beaten all of these schools multiple times throughout its history.

Some of their wins against these teams are among the greatest in school history. Even if they exert a certain amount of dominance over a few of the programs, they have enjoyed some epic victories over them in the past.

Even before the formation of the SEC, Tennessee football had a rivalry with many of the current schools and played in other conferences with them, whether that was the Southern Conference or the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA). Simply put, the Vols have played every school in the league quite a few times.

But what is their most memorable game against each of them? In this post, we’re going to break that down by taking a look at the Vols’ best win against every single SEC opponent. We will take a look at all 16 other schools that are either in the league now or were once in the league.

The only rule here is that the school has to have played in the SEC at one point. However, the Vols’ win against them doesn’t have to be when they played in the SEC. We’re just analyzing their history against every conference foe.

We will have one win per school, but the wins will be ranked in a countdown up to their best win ever against an SEC opponent. So don’t expect this to go in alphabetical order, be separated by divisions and membership status or organized in any way like that. We just take their best win against each school and rank those wins against each other.

Our criteria for these wins includes the thrill of the victory, the quality of the opponent when the Vols beat them, the impact it had on that particular season and whether or not it was a rivalry game. All of those things go into account whenever you’re ranking memorable games.

So let’s take a trip down Memory Lane, knowing that these wins span over the course of 100 years. This is a look at Tennessee football’s most memorable win against every current and former SEC school and a ranking of those victories against each other.