Tennessee defends the belt, 46–0, at home over Kentucky.
AP poll, week 7: Kentucky 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 47 days into reign #83, which began with a win over Auburn, with 5 defenses already behind it; this was its 6th defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 12 more times before USC took it on January 1, 1940, 450 days after the reign began.
For Kentucky this was its 2nd shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the first of 5 meetings between the two with the belt on the line; all-time Tennessee leads 5–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Tennessee defended the belt against Kentucky on November 24, 1938, winning 46-0 at home. The decisive victory allowed Tennessee to retain the championship.
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 22879) · This game in the downloadable dataset