Tennessee defends the belt, 7–0, at home over Auburn.
AP poll, week 8: Auburn 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 427 days into reign #83, which began with a win over Auburn, with 17 defenses already behind it; this was its 18th defense. It was the last defense: USC took the belt in the very next belt game, on January 1, 1940.
For Auburn this was its 2nd shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 2nd of 4 belt games between the two; going in, Tennessee led the belt series 1–0; all-time Tennessee leads 3–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Tennessee defeated Auburn 7-0 on December 9, 1939, in the regular season finale. 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 23575) · This game in the downloadable dataset