Some college football games are artistic beauties, back-and-forth battles between talented offenses and tenacious defenses that have stories told about them passed down from generation to generation.

Then there are college football games like Saturday’s Third Saturday in October matchup between No. 7 Alabama and No. 11 Tennessee. Precisely no one will be painting commemorative pictures in the wake of this one. But scoreboards don’t always require artwork, and the resulting 24-17 victory by the Volunteers in the 107th edition of this rivalry falls squarely into the “any win is a great one” category.

That result, combined with the tremendous amount of cigar smoke wafting above Neyland Stadium coming from the home team’s orange-bathed fans, signaled an official end of the Alabama dynasty.

What it also signaled is that Josh Heupel’s Volunteers bunch is still very much in the national title picture, still battling in an Southeastern Conference that is as unrelenting as it is electric.

Tennessee kept its cool down the stretch, executing on both sides of the football precisely as Alabama was burning through its composure. Tennessee’s offense, led by talented-if-young quarterback Nico Iamaleava, righted what was an abysmal first-half effort and engineered 3 poised touchdown drives. And for Alabama, Kendrick Law’s unsportsmanlike conduct penalty turned into a 4th-and-22 prayer that went answered – the Tide emptying the clip into their own foot for a final time on a Saturday to forget.

Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer will face plenty of questions about his squad’s anemic offense, all of them deserved. Jalen Milroe has digressed to the point that any remaining Heisman Trophy conversation dissolved the nanosecond he flicked a spiral directly into the midsection of Vols defensive back Will Brooks with 1:24 to play.

The Crimson Tide showed ominous signs early that it wasn’t going to be their night, and each one breathed new life into a Tennessee team that hadn’t shown much of it in the recent past.  Alabama’s defense was relentless early, forcing Iamaleava into uncorking an interception and then luring 1-play replacement Gaston Moore into another pick.

But time and again, Alabama couldn’t capitalize on the gifts. The Tide’s only points of the first half were delivered by transcendent freshman Ryan Williams – a juggling TD catch to cap a lengthy drive that was born off a missed Vols field goal.

Tennessee scored as many points in the first half Saturday as it had the past 2 first halves of football, which is precisely nil – the first time the Vols had managed that level of offensive ineptitude since 1963. It is worth noting how difficult it is to win SEC games when you can’t change a scoreboard off 0 in 30 minutes of football, regardless of how many times your opponent fails to capitalize on your own miscues.

In addition to giving the football to the Tide 3 times via turnovers in the first 30, Tennessee also whiffed on 2 field-goal attempts – the second of which drew more than a smattering of boos from the faithful who get their corn from a jar.

Much credit for Alabama’s first-half defensive bagel should go to defensive coordinator Kane Wommack, who has taken more lip from the Tide fan base over the past couple weeks. Losing to Vanderbilt and barely escaping South Carolina will earn you that kind of enmity from your own faithful. But Wommack dialed up all kinds of confusion in Iamaleava’s face and kept Tennessee off balance throughout.

Which is a good thing, too, as the Tide offense wasn’t exactly clicking on all cylinders – unless said offense was engineered to play Saturday with only 2.5 cylinders to start with. Milroe looked Williams’ way 12 times in the first 30 minutes – which is 1 more pass attempt than the rest of his Tide receivers saw in the same time frame. And the running game was largely absent, gaining just 14 yards against a salty Tennessee defense bent to bottle up the Tide.

Whatever Tennessee talked about at intermission about its offensive ineptitude, it appeared to revolve around feeding running back Dylan Sampson. That strategy worked – as the Vols cracked the code midway through the third quarter when Sampson chewed up 53 yards by himself over a 91-yard scoring drive to knot it at 7.

Sampson’s second score late in the third quarter made it 14-10 and portended more doom for the Tide, as he was en route to a 139-yard rushing effort. Brick by steady brick, Tennessee was erecting the kind of confident wall in the face of a one-dimensional Alabama offense that had basically abandoned the run.

By the time it was all said and done on this oft-ugly Saturday afternoon – Heupel’s Vols arranging in the Victory formation and underclassmen struggling with smuggled matchbooks and Zippos in the stands — one point above all others became alarmingly clear.

Yes, Neyland fireworks lit up the night sky and Rocky Top blared over and and over and over again to celebrate another chapter in this Third Saturday in October rivalry. But if you listened closely, you could also hear a million Joe Barstools across the country turned to the guy two chairs down and spoke the words all of college football longed to hear …

“Alabama is dead.”