With a top 76 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS is high on the Tennessee football Volunteers.
It’s only natural that Tennessee football would rise in rankings given the Big Ten, Pac-12, Mountain West, MAC and four Independents postponing their fall sports due to COVID-19. Now, they continue to be in the top 20 across most preseason rankings.
The Vols came in at No. 16 in the CBS Sports top 76. They were the highest-ranked among 10 teams considered “The Gainers,” who entered the new top 25 due to the adjustments in rankings. Half the SEC is also in the new top 25 rankings.
Other gainers, in order of ranking behind Rocky Top, were the Iowa State Cyclones, Virginia Tech Hokies, Louisville Cardinals, Miami Hurricanes, Kentucky Wildcats, Florida State Seminoles, Baylor Bears, Pittsburgh Panthers and Appalachian State Mountaineers. Here’s what was said about the Tennessee football program entering Jeremy Pruitt’s third year.
"The turnaround for Jeremy Pruitt during the 2019 season provided some offseason optimism as Year 3 expectations have set in for a staff that has also been providing positive headlines on the recruiting trail. The Volunteers defense could be elite with Henry To’o To’o as the team’s breakout star at linebacker following his SEC All-Freshman team debut in 2019. He’s one of several promising young players stepping into bigger roles in 2020 as players from Pruitt’s recruiting classes start to take over as the new starters and stars for Tennessee."
While it is true that coming off an 8-5 season in which they won their final six games and returning a ton of starters while getting a top 10 recruiting class would all come together to produce high expectations, there are questions surrounding UT. Many of those questions revolve around a more difficult schedule.
That new schedule just got a lot tougher. UT’s revised 10-game SEC-only schedule may have dropped the Oklahoma Sooners, who are No. 3 in these ranking, but it added the Auburn Tigers and Texas A&M Aggies, who are No. 8 and No. 9 respectively in these rankings.
Add in the Florida Gators at No. 5, the Georgia Bulldogs at No. 4 and Alabama Crimson Tide at No. 2, and the Vols have five of their 10 games against opponents ranked in the CBS top 10, three in the top five. Add Kentucky, who has moved up to No. 21, and UT has six games against teams in the adjusted top 25 while being ranked below five of them.
Taking all this into account, Tennessee football’s schedule looks a heck of a lot more brutal on paper. Their other four opponents are the Missouri Tigers, ranked No. 34, the South Carolina Gamecocks, ranked No. 38, the Vanderbilt Commodores, ranked No. 62 and the Arkansas Razorbacks, ranked No. 63. So they have eight foes in the top 40 of these rankings.