Tennessee football: Vols have four wins vs. Alabama with losing record

Many times, Tennessee football has had losing record when facing the Alabama Crimson Tide. But the Volunteers have only won four such games.

There are plenty of times in history when Tennessee football was severely outmatched as they got set to face the Alabama Crimson Tide. What else would you expect when two teams have faced each other 101 times.

As they get set for their 102nd meeting, though, the Vols appear more outmatched than usual. Alabama is the No. 1 ranked team in the country, and UT celebrated its first FBS win of the season just last week. Oh, and the game is in Tuscaloosa while the Tide have won the last 12 matchups.

It’s hard to find a year in this series in which more things were working against Tennessee football, a team that is 2-4 and 1-2 in the SEC. When the Vols face the Tide with a losing record, which has happened plenty of times, it usually doesn’t end well.

However, there are some rare games in history in which that happened. Of the Vols’ 38 wins against the Tide, four have come when they entered the game under .500. They’ll be looking for an impossible fifth win on Saturday, but at least they have a bit of precedence on this front. In this post, we’re going to look at those instances.

There have been plenty of times in which the Vols or the Tide pulled off a major upset against the other team in the series, and UT has had a few meetings while they were .500 and scored a big win. The most notable one is 1982, when they ended an 11-game losing streak to Bama while they were 2-2-1 and the Tide were undefeated and ranked No. 1.

But winning with an outright losing record is much more uncommon. So when has that happened? How far back in history to we have to go to find games like that? Let’s take a look here. These are the four times in history Tennessee football beat the Alabama Crimson Tide while entering the game under .500.