Tennessee defends the belt, 21–0, at home over Alabama.
AP poll, week 6: Alabama unranked at Tennessee No. 2 · No. 1 that week: Texas A&M. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 378 days into reign #83, which began with a win over Auburn, with 11 defenses already behind it; this was its 12th defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 6 more times before USC took it on January 1, 1940, 450 days after the reign began.
For Alabama this was its 2nd shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the 2nd of 7 belt games between the two; going in, Tennessee led the belt series 1–0; all-time Alabama leads 4–3. Every meeting →
About this game
Tennessee defeated Alabama 21-0 on October 21, 1939, in Knoxville. As the belt's defending holder, Tennessee retained the championship 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 23223) · This game in the downloadable dataset