Week 8 of the 2025 college football season has finally arrived, and with it comes one of the greatest rivalries in the entire nation between 2 of the SEC’s most iconic programs.
Dubbed “The Third Saturday in October,” the annual meeting between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Tennessee Volunteers is always a spectacle to behold when it finally rolls around.
This weekend’s matchup is set to hold some massive SEC and College Football Playoff implications, and ESPN analyst Bill Connelly has released his SP+ projections for how the game will end up playing out between the Tide and the Vols.
The SP+ is a predictive model that takes a number of different historical trends and stats and uses them to craft power rankings for ESPN and project the outcome of any given game from week to week.
When it comes to this weekend’s tilt between Alabama and Tennessee, the SP+ is projecting a very close game with the Tide edging out the Vols at home by a final score of 29-27.
This matchup has been very tight over the past several years, with Tennessee actually taking 2 of the last 3 by a single score, and Connelly is projecting something similar here in 2025.
There’s a lot on the line for both of these programs as they get into the back half of their respective schedules, so it will be interesting to see how things end up playing out come kickoff.
