Tennessee defends the belt, 19–0, on the road at Kentucky.
AP poll, week 8: Tennessee No. 2 at Kentucky unranked · No. 1 that week: Texas A&M. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 418 days into reign #83, which began with a win over Auburn, with 16 defenses already behind it; this was its 17th defense. Tennessee went on to defend it 1 more time before USC took it on January 1, 1940, 450 days after the reign began.
For Kentucky this was its 3rd shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the 2nd of 5 belt games between the two; going in, Tennessee led the belt series 1–0; all-time Tennessee leads 5–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Tennessee traveled to Kentucky on November 30, 1939, as the defending belt holder. Kentucky won the game 19-0, but Tennessee retained the belt as the defending champion, as the belt only changes hands when the challenger defeats the holder.
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 23548) · This game in the downloadable dataset