ESPN’s SP+ has predicted the final score of a very important SEC game on Saturday night in Knoxville.
That’s where No. 18 Oklahoma will face No. 14 Tennessee in a primetime showdown between 2-loss teams that are desperate to avoid that dreaded 3rd loss that would completely end any College Football Playoff hopes. The kickoff is at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC at what’s sure to be a rocking Neyland Stadium. It’ll be Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel facing the program that he quarterbacked to a national title in 2000.
Now, 25 years later, he’ll be trying to beat the Sooners and send them to that 3rd loss that neither team wants. Both teams enter the Week 10 high-stakes matchup at 6-2 overall.
ESPN’s SP+ is available for all of the Week 10 matchups, and the model is projecting Oklahoma to pull the mild upset, 28-27.
Here’s that prediction along with the rest of the Week 10 slate:
Because Oklahoma just joined the SEC in 2024, the Sooners and Volunteers haven’t played all that much throughout their illustrious football histories. Saturday will be just the 6th meeting all-time between the teams, with Oklahoma holding a 3-2 lead. The series does go back to 1939, and Tennessee fired the first blow against Oklahoma as SEC rivals, with the Vols winning in Norman last year.
This will be Oklahoma’s 2nd game ever at Neyland Stadium. That first game was a memorable one for the Sooners, who prevailed in double overtime in Knoxville in 2015.
A decade later, Oklahoma returns to Neyland Stadium, with everything at stake for it and the orange-clad team on the other sideline.
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.
