Tennessee defends the belt, 44–0, at home over The Citadel.
AP poll, week 6: The Citadel unranked at Tennessee No. 4 · No. 1 that week: Notre Dame. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 14 days into reign #83, which began with a win over Auburn, with one defense already behind it; this was its second defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 16 more times before USC took it on January 1, 1940, 450 days after the reign began.
For The Citadel this was its first shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t: 2 attempts in all, every one of them a loss or a tie.
It was the first of 2 meetings between the two with the belt on the line; all-time Tennessee leads 2–0.
About this game
Tennessee defended the belt against The Citadel on October 22, 1938, winning 44-0. With the victory, Tennessee retained the college football belt.
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 22600) · This game in the downloadable dataset