Tennessee defends the belt, 40–0, at home over Sewanee.
AP poll, week 4: Sewanee unranked at Tennessee No. 1 · No. 1 that week: Tennessee. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 364 days into reign #83, which began with a win over Auburn, with 9 defenses already behind it; this was its 10th defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 8 more times before USC took it on January 1, 1940, 450 days after the reign began.
For Sewanee this was its first shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t; this remains its only belt game.
This is the only time Sewanee and Tennessee have met with the belt on the line.
About this game
On October 7, 1939, defending belt holder Tennessee defeated Sewanee 40-0 at home in a week 4 regular season matchup. Tennessee retained the belt with the victory.
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 23090) · This game in the downloadable dataset