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Tennessee football: Do Vols fare better with all home non-conference games?

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - SEPTEMBER 15: A view of the outside of Neyland Stadium before a game between the Florida Gators and Tennessee Volunteers on September 15, 2012 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - SEPTEMBER 15: A view of the outside of Neyland Stadium before a game between the Florida Gators and Tennessee Volunteers on September 15, 2012 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by John Sommers II/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Joe Murphy/Getty Images
Photo by Joe Murphy/Getty Images /

Tier 4

Zero, one or two games above .500

These are games in which the Vols finished .500 or barely above it, but they were still below average seasons by the standards of the school’s history.

SEC

1961: 6-4 (4-3)

1963: 5-5 (3-5)

2009: 7-6 (3-5)

Pre-SEC

1900: 3-2-1 (0-2-1)

1915: 4-4 (0-4)

1919: 3-3-3 (0-3-2)

These are average seasons for most college teams but below average by the standard of Tennessee football history. Anyway, one of the three SEC teams on here only played two non-conference games, so both being at home didn’t mean much since there was an extra conference game. Lane Kiffin’s 2009 team, though, still managed to lose a home non-conference game.

Prior to SEC play, all home non-conference games could mean a lot of .500 seasons. If you notice, all three teams on this list failed to win any of their conference games, so it was their non-conference schedule that got them to .500.

Final count

SEC Era: 3 (16 overall)

Pre-SEC: 3 (6 overall)

Complete history: 6 (22 overall)

Percentages

SEC Era: 18 percent (19 percent overall)

Pre-SEC: 21 percent (18 percent overall)

Complete history: 19 percent (19 percent overall)

So below average seasons for the Vols, well, are slightly less common when they play all non-SEC games at home but were slightly more common during the pre-SEC era. So it turned things into a bit of a wash overall.

The Vols within the context of history were as likely to have a below average season when playing all home non-conference games as they were when not doing so. That’s a bit of a surprise given the previous slide.

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