Tennessee defends the belt, 14–0, on the road at Vanderbilt.
AP poll, week 7: Tennessee No. 4 at Vanderbilt unranked · No. 1 that week: Notre Dame. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 35 days into reign #83, which began with a win over Auburn, with 4 defenses already behind it; this was its 5th defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 13 more times before USC took it on January 1, 1940, 450 days after the reign began.
For Vanderbilt this was its 3rd shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the first of 6 meetings between the two with the belt on the line; all-time Tennessee leads 5–0–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Tennessee visited Vanderbilt on November 12, 1938, in a regular season matchup. Vanderbilt won 14-0. As the belt's defending champion, Tennessee retained the belt despite the loss.
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 22796) · This game in the downloadable dataset