ESPN updates new bowl projection for Tennessee following Week 9
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ESPN bowl experts Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach gave their updated bowl projections on Sunday after a thrilling Week 9 of the college football season, and those projections included differing opinions on where Tennessee will wind up.
The Volunteers bounced back in a big way from that Week 8 loss at Alabama with another offensive explosion in Saturday night’s 56-34 victory at Kentucky. Quarterback Joey Aguilar put on a show in Lexington, throwing for 396 yards and 3 touchdowns to help the 17th-ranked Vols improve to 6-2 overall and 3-2 in the SEC.
With the victory, Tennessee moved up 3 spots to No. 14 in Sunday’s latest AP rankings. Next up for the Volunteers is a primetime showdown in Week 10, with No. 18 Oklahoma coming to Knoxville for a 7:30 p.m. ET kickoff on ABC. That’s the present. But what about the future, as in Tennessee’s bowl future?
According to Bonagura, Tennessee is now on the path to play Pittsburgh in Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte in another primetime kickoff (8 p.m. ET, ESPN) on Friday, Jan. 2.
As for Schlabach, he has the Vols heading to the ReliaQuest Bowl a few days earlier on Wednesday, Dec. 31, and he has them facing Iowa in a noon ET kickoff on ESPN in Tampa.
There’s a lot that can happen from now until then that could change Tennessee’s bowl projection, but for now this is where ESPN’s 2 bowl gurus have the Volunteers going.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
