How Tennessee football has fared against AP No. 1 teams

When Tennessee welcomes Texas into Neyland Stadium on Saturday afternoon, it will mark the 20th occasion the Vols have battled the No. 1 team in the Associated Press Top 25. Tennessee has gone 2-17 in its previous matchups with the AP's top-ranked team in the land and hasn't had much success in the 21st century in its games. The first time the Vols took on a No. 1 team came on Nov. 7, 1959, when unbeaten LSU came to Knoxville. The Tigers had won 19 straight coming into the contest, but Tennessee was able to put an end to the streak, 14-13. LSU scored first, but the Vols scored 14 in the third quarter to take the lead. The Tigers then found pay dirt in the fourth but opted to go for two and the lead. LSU star Billy Cannon was stuffed, though, by the Tennessee defense, which allowed the No. 13 Vols to pull the upset. Tennessee wouldn't get another shot at an AP No. 1 for another 20 years, then got an opportunity in back-to-back years in the Third Saturday in October. In 1979, the No. 18 Vols travelled to Birmingham to face No. 1 Alabama and jumped out to a 17-0 lead. But, the Tide responded with 27 unanswered to down Tennessee. The next year, the Crimson Tide came to Knoxville and handled the Vols, 27-0. In 1985, Bo Jackson and No. 1 Auburn came to Neyland Stadium to face a then-unranked Volunteers squad. However, behind 259 passing yards from Tony Robinson and a 24-0 start, Tennessee earned a 38-20 victory over the Tigers. The team that went on to be known as the "Sugar Vols" held Jackson in check, as the future Raiders running back went for just 80 rushing yards on 17 attempts. The next time Tennessee took on a top-ranked foe came in 1990 against Notre Dame. The No. 9 Vols and No. 1 Fighting Irish took part in a classic in which Notre Dame took home a 34-29 win. UT grabbed a 23-20 lead through three quarters before Ricky Watters scored a go-ahead touchdown with 5:30 left. The Irish went up 34-23 after taking advantage of a short field, but the Vols kept fighting. Tennessee scored with under two minutes to go and got the onside kick, but Rod Smith picked off a pass at the goal line to seal it. The Vols' next battle against a No. 1 was the 1994 contest at home against Florida, and the Gators blew them out 31-0. In 2002, Tennessee hosted No. 1 Miami for its homecoming game. The Vols got on the board first with a field goal, but the Hurricanes scored the final 26 points to win comfortably as they out-gained the Vols 422-218 in total yardage. The Vols made two trips to face the top-ranked team in the nation at the time in 2009, first in September against Florida, which resulted in a 23-10 loss. Then in October, Tennessee dropped a heartbreaker in Tuscaloosa 12-10 to Alabama. With 1:19 left, UT got within two after a Jonathan Crompton touchdown pass. It then recovered an onside kick and drove to the Tide 28-yard line before Daniel Lincoln's last-second field goal was blocked by Terrence Cody to preserve a Bama win. It was his second blocked kick of the quarter. In 2011, the Vols welcomed No. 1 LSU into Knoxville, but couldn't recapture the magic of the 1959 upset and fell to the Tigers 38-7. From 2012-2019, Tennessee faced the highest-ranked team in the AP Poll six times, with every occurrence coming against Nick Saban's Alabama. Only one of them was a ranked-versus-ranked matchup, the 2016 game in which the Tide rolled 49-10. Alabama won all six games by an average of 33.7 points. The past three contests against No. 1 came against Georgia, all three coming in defeats. The highest profile of the matchups came in 2022, when the AP Poll had the Bulldogs ranked at No. 1, while the Vols were the No. 1 in the College Football Playoffs rankings. That afternoon, Georgia stymied the UT offense in Athens to a 27-13 victory. Tennessee's last battle against the No. 1 Bulldogs was in 2023. The Vols scored on the first play from scrimmage, a 75-yard Jaylen Wright touchdown, but Georgia cruised from there to a 38-10 win. While that is all the Vols have done against AP No. 1s, they do have a third win against a top-ranked team in a major poll. Tennessee's historic 52-49 victory over Alabama in 2022 came when the Tide were No. 1 in the coaches' poll, but No. 3 in the AP Poll.