Tennessee defends the belt, 13–0, on the road at Alabama.
AP poll, week 5: Tennessee No. 3 at Alabama No. 20 · No. 1 that week: Notre Dame. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 7 days into reign #83, which began with a win over Auburn, with no defenses yet; this was its first defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 17 more times before USC took it on January 1, 1940, 450 days after the reign began.
For Alabama this was its first shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the first of 7 meetings between the two with the belt on the line; all-time Alabama leads 4–3. Every meeting →
About this game
Tennessee visited Alabama on October 15, 1938, in week 5 of the regular season. Tennessee won 13-0, retaining the college football belt as the defending champion.
Written by Claude, strictly from this site’s own record of the game — the score and what it meant for the belt. CFBD doesn’t have a box score for games this old, so nothing here is invented beyond what’s verifiably on file.
Sources Game record: College Football Data (id 22533) · This game in the downloadable dataset