Tennessee defends the belt, 13–0, at home over Vanderbilt.
AP poll, week 8: Vanderbilt 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 406 days into reign #83, which began with a win over Auburn, with 15 defenses already behind it; this was its 16th defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 2 more times before USC took it on January 1, 1940, 450 days after the reign began.
For Vanderbilt this was its 4th shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the 2nd of 6 belt games between the two; going in, Tennessee led the belt series 1–0; all-time Tennessee leads 5–0–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Tennessee defended the belt at home against Vanderbilt on November 18, 1939, winning 13-0 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 23478) · This game in the downloadable dataset