Tennessee defends the belt, 27–7, on the road at Vanderbilt.
AP poll, week 11: Tennessee No. 2 at Vanderbilt unranked · No. 1 that week: Navy. The belt vs. the polls →
Where this game sits in the lineage
Tennessee came in 371 days into reign #114, which began with a win over Vanderbilt, with 9 defenses already behind it; this was its 10th defense. It was the last defense: Baylor took the belt in the very next belt game, on January 1, 1957.
For Vanderbilt this was its 6th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 4th of 6 belt games between the two; going in, Tennessee led the belt series 3–0; all-time Tennessee leads 5–0–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Tennessee visited Vanderbilt on December 1, 1956, in week 12 of the regular season. Vanderbilt won 27-7. 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 33727) · This game in the downloadable dataset