Tennessee defends the belt, 17–0, at home over Mercer.
AP poll, week 7: Mercer unranked at Tennessee No. 4 · No. 1 that week: USC. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 385 days into reign #83, which began with a win over Auburn, with 12 defenses already behind it; this was its 13th defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 5 more times before USC took it on January 1, 1940, 450 days after the reign began.
For Mercer this was its 2nd shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t: 3 attempts in all, every one of them a loss or a tie.
This is the only time Mercer and Tennessee have met with the belt on the line.
About this game
Mercer visited Tennessee on October 28, 1939, in week 7 of the regular season. Tennessee won 17-0, defeating the visiting Bears. The victory allowed Tennessee to retain 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 23289) · This game in the downloadable dataset