The Tennessee football Volunteers are moving up in the Southeastern Conference.
It only took one week for a major upset to occur in this new 10-game SEC-only schedule for all league teams. That had a huge effect on our first round of power rankings and may have hindered where Tennessee football could have ended up.
Nonetheless, with their first season-opening win in three years, the Vols are in better position after their first game than they have been the previous couple of years. They also are in a pretty good position to move up the rankings soon.
With the longest winning streak among Power Five conferences, we actually could have a strong case to move Tennessee football even further up the list. However, that’s not how we approach power rankings.
Our rankings are only based on what teams have done this year and how they are looking at the current moment. Normally, we factor in schedule strength, but with no out of conference games and every team playing each other, these teams can really be separated just by record early on.
Since it’s so early, we’ll somewhat take into account how good we expect each team to be based on where they finished last year, but that’s only for the context of impressive wins by certain teams. As of now, they are only separated by wins and losses.
What’s clear, though, is that it’s just exciting for everybody to see the sport back. We are calling it Week 4 because it is the fourth week of the season, even if it is the first week for the SEC. This is the best way for us to keep some continuity as the year goes on.
Anyway, let’s go ahead and dive into league-play and see where Tennessee football arrived. It’s time to get back to the fun of debating where teams stand. These are our SEC Power Rankings following Week 4 of the 2020 season.