Bowl projections: Where Tennessee stands entering final regular season game

Tennessee will be looking for win No. 9 on the season on Saturday afternoon. Maybe more importantly they’ll be looking to beat rival Vanderbilt and keep Diego Pavia out of the College Football Playoff. Though the game is meaningless for any sort of CFP appearance for the Volunteers, it will likely go a long way towards determining what bowl they end up in.

A 9-3 record would seem to put Tennessee in a spot to land a Florida bowl game. A loss would bring the Duke’s Mayo or Music City into the picture. Quite a bit of the bowl picture hinges on this final game with Vanderbilt in a very similar spot.

Tennessee Bowl Projections

ESPN: Duke’s Mayo Bowl vs. Louisville

ESPN: ReliaQuest Bowl vs. Iowa

Athlon Sports: Gator Bowl vs. Miami

Sporting News: Citrus Bowl vs. Michigan

CBS Sports: Gator Bowl vs. Virginia

All over the place, right? We do know one thing, we’ll know a whole lot more after Tennessee and Vanderbilt battle it out in Knoxville next weekend. The Volunteers remain razon-thin favorites and that hasn’t changed throughout the course of the week.

The opponents are coming into focus as well. Iowa, who just alway seems to find Tennessee down in Florida, is a strong option after finishing 8-4. Louisville would make sense sitting at 7-4 with Kentucky left on the schedule on Saturday.

Tennessee has frequented all of these bowl games over the last couple of decades, outside of the Duke’s Mayo bowl. Josh Heupel is 2-1 in true bowls during his time at Tennessee — that should be 3-0 if you’ll remember the 2021 Music City Bowl. The Volunteers, of course, ran into a buzzsaw in the playoff last year in Columbus.

All games are set to be announced next Sunday following the release of the CFP bracket.