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Four West teams Tennessee football wants if non-SEC play canceled

By Caleb Calhoun

COLUMBIA, MISSOURI - NOVEMBER 23: Head coach Jeremy Pruitt of the Tennessee Volunteers leads his team to to the field prior to a game against the Missouri Tigers at Faurot Field/Memorial Stadium on November 23, 2019 in Columbia, Missouri. (Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images)
COLUMBIA, MISSOURI - NOVEMBER 23: Head coach Jeremy Pruitt of the Tennessee Volunteers leads his team to to the field prior to a game against the Missouri Tigers at Faurot Field/Memorial Stadium on November 23, 2019 in Columbia, Missouri. (Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images) /
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"Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images"

In place of non-Southeastern Conference opponents, here’s who the Tennessee football Volunteers want to play.

Heading into the season, Tennessee football already has to play the projected best team from the SEC West, the Alabama Crimson Tide, and the projected worst team, the Arkansas Razorbacks. By visiting the Oklahoma Sooners, they were also set to have a brutal non-conference slate.

However, with the Big Ten starting the domino effect of canceling all non-conference games, there’s a chance the SEC follows suit. Should that happen, the question would then be whether or not the SEC plays a 10-game schedule against all SEC teams or just replaces those four non-conference games for everybody with conference games.

If the latter happens, then every SEC school would face all but one other SEC school. After all, each team avoids five teams from the other division each year, and they would add four more opponents from that division while playing everybody in their division.

Should that happen, how would Tennessee football want the schedule to go? Well, in this post, we’re going to break that down. If the Vols have to play four teams, this is a look at who they would want to play and when they would want to play them.

While we are taking the difficulty of each team into account, we are also looking at the youth of each team. Experience, after all, could be a major factor going forward this season given how the pandemic has shaken everything up.

Of course, any sort of decision to switch up the schedule like this makes 6-6 much more on the table than before. The champions of the SEC, Big Ten and other conferences could all end up with four losses, and there could be a team in the playoff with such a record.

Such a situation may level the playing field for teams like the Vols. They could cash in with the right schedule. Let’s see how that would work. These are the SEC West teams Tennessee football wants to face in place of its non-conference games if those games are canceled.

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