Taking an updated look at Tennessee football’s future non-conference opponents (2024)

• Date(s): August 30, 2025 in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta
• Payout: Tennessee will receive a $3.8 million payment provided it sells its allotment of 22,500 tickets.
• When the game contract was signed: July 7, 2020

Tennessee announced its 2025 neutral-site season opener against Syracuse in July 2021. It will be the third time the Vols have played in the annual Atlanta non-conference game having beaten Georgia Tech in double overtime as one of the first games in Mercedes-Benz Stadium back in 2017 and knocked off NC State in the Georgia Dome in 2012. Those games were played on Labor Day Monday night and on Friday night, respectively, but the Syracuse game is scheduled for a Saturday.

It will be the fourth all-time meeting between Tennessee and Syracuse with the Vols winning both games of a home-and-home series in 1998 (at Syracuse) and 2001 (at Tennessee) and taking the Gator Bowl on New Year’s Eve in 1966. You definitely remember the 1998 game: Tennessee’s national championship season began with a thrilling battle with Donovan McNabb, won on a walk-off field goal after a pass interference penalty kept alive the game-winning drive. You probably don’t remember the other two – Tennessee’s 33-9 win in 2001 and the Vols, led by MVP quarterback Dewey Warren, holding off a late rally from Larry Csonka-led Syracuse in a Gator Bowl matchup in Jacksonville.

• Date(s): September 6, 2025 at Neyland Stadium
• Payout: ETSU will receive $575,000.
• When the game contract was signed: July 13, 2020

Tennessee continues to keep it in-state with its annual games against Football Championship Subdivision opponents. East Tennessee State will keep the trend going after the Vols faced Tennessee Tech in 2021, UT Martin in 2022 and Austin Peay in 2023 and will face Chattanooga in 2024. (It will end in 2026 – more on that shortly …)

This will be ETSU’s second-ever game at Neyland Stadium after losing 59-3 in 2018. The Bucs started playing football in 1920 before folding their program in 2003, and the school brought it back with its first game in 2015. ETSU will have a new coach in 2024 after parting ways with legendary Maryville (Tenn.) High School coach George Quarles after two seasons, and the Bucs nabbed Tre Lamb, a conference-winning quarterback at Tennessee Tech fresh off back-to-back FCS playoff appearances at Gardner-Webb, to replace him.

• Date(s): September 20, 2025 at Neyland Stadium
• Payout: UAB will get $1.65 million for the game.
• When the game contract was signed: June 30, 2021

UAB has become a regular opponent for Tennessee as this will be the sixth meeting between the two programs, all since 1998. The Blazers made things uncomfortable for the Vols a couple of times with a 17-10 loss in the 2005 opener and a 32-29 double-overtime defeat in 2010, but the other three meetings were easy Tennessee wins. The Vols won 37-13 to move to No. 1 in the polls in 1998 and rolled to 35-3 and 30-7 wins in 2008 and 2019, respectively, though the 2019 game was later vacated as part of the Jeremy Pruitt NCAA infractions case.

The two programs also were scheduled to open the 2015 season in Nashville before UAB disbanded its football program for two years (2015-16). The Blazers came back strong with Conference USA titles under Bill Clark in 2018 and 2020 and went 50-26 over a six-year span after its brief disappearance. The move to the American Athletic Conference proved a challenge as UAB went 4-8 in 2023 in its first season under Trent Dilfer, the former Super Bowl-winning quarterback hired from Nashville’s Lipscomb Academy.

• Date(s): November 15, 2025 at Neyland Stadium.
• Payout: New Mexico State will receive $1.6 million for the game.
• When the game contract was signed: June 25, 2021

Tennessee is 2-0 against New Mexico, but this will be the program’s first meeting with New Mexico State. The Aggies are no stranger to playing SEC teams having played 14 of them since the start of the 2011 season and doubling up with two SEC games in 2019 and 2021. New Mexico State notched its first-ever win against an SEC team last season with a 31-10 win at Auburn last season.

The Aggies were less competitive in losses to Missouri (45-14) in 2022 and Alabama (59-3) and Kentucky (56-16) in 2021, but this is a program coming off a 17-11 two-year stretch with its fifth- and sixth-ever bowl appearances under veteran head coach Jerry Kill and entering its second season in Conference USA after a five-season run as an FBS Independent. Kill stepped down earlier this offseason and former UNLV head coach Tony Sanchez was promoted to replace him. New Mexico State’s SEC game in 2024 is at Texas A&M.

• Date(s): September 5, 2026 at Neyland Stadium
• Payout: Furman will receive $500,000 for the game.
• When the game contract was signed: Tennessee and Furman were initially scheduled to play in 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic scuppered the game. So this matchup was initially set in September 2016. The amendment moving the game to its current date was fully executed on June 17, 2021.

The third-ever Tennessee-Furman meeting was delayed a half-dozen years after the SEC moved to a conference-only schedule during the pandemic in 2020. The Vols and Paladins last met during World War II. Tennessee won both games in Knoxville by 32-6 and 52-7 scores.

Furman has become one of the more consistent Football Championship Subdivision programs under head coach Clay Hendrix, the long-time Air Force assistant now in his eighth season as his alma mater. The Paladins are 51-29 under Hendrix with two Southern Conference titles (2018 and 2023) and four FCS Playoff appearances, including a run to the quarterfinals last season. Furman opens the 2024 season at Ole Miss.

• Date(s): September 12, 2026 in Lincoln, and September 11, 2027 at Neyland Stadium
• Payout: The visitors get $340,000 for each game.
• When the game contract was signed: The initial agreement in May 2006 was amended to its current dates on October 24, 2013.

Suddenly this series scheduled back in 2006, when Phillip Fulmer was coming off his first losing season at Tennessee and Nebraska was in the Big 12 and coached by Bill Callahan (now the offensive line coach for the Tennessee Titans), is just two years away. Tennessee and Nebraska were initially scheduled to play in 2016 and 2017, but the series was bumped back a decade so Tennessee could play Virginia Tech in the “Battle at Bristol” in 2016, which also created the chance to play Georgia Tech in the 2017 opener at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The Cornhuskers replaced the series with Oregon and split the games with the Ducks.

Tennessee and Nebraska’s previous three meetings were all in bowl games. The Huskers won the Orange Bowl and Fiesta Bowl to conclude the 1997 and 1999 seasons, and the Vols won the 2016 Music City Bowl matchup in Nashville. Where were the current head coaches back in 2006? Josh Heupel was in his first season as Oklahoma’s quarterbacks coach and Matt Rhule was Temple’s defensive line coach.

• Date(s): September 19, 2026 at Neyland Stadium
• Payout: Western Michigan will get $1.2 million for the game.
• When the game contract was signed: June 26, 2022

More #MACtion is coming to Neyland Stadium in a couple of years. Tennessee opened the 2021 season against Bowling Green, played both Ball State and Akron in 2022 and will play Kent State this season. The Vols have played Western Kentucky and Western Carolina, but this will be the first-ever meeting with Western Michigan.

The Broncos made three bowl games and compiled a 37-32 record in six seasons (2017-22) under Tim Lester. First-year head coach Lance Taylor, a walk-on wide receiver at Alabama who was a graduate assistant for his alma mater during its first two seasons under Nick Saban (2007-08) and went on to be an assistant coach in the NFL and at Stanford, Notre Dame and Louisville, went 4-8 in his first season in Kalamazoo in 2023. Western Michigan has played in nine bowls since 2005 and won the MAC and played in the Cotton Bowl under P.J. Fleck in 2016, but haven’t reached the MAC Championship Game since.

• Date(s): September 2, 2028 in the Duke’s Mayo Classic at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte
• Payout: Each school could make $3.8-plus million if the game is a sellout, but even selling 83% of the ticket allotment (or 61,977) will net more than $3.28 million.
• When the game contract was signed: February 24, 2021

Tennessee and West Virginia really should have played more than once in football, but the only meeting between the Vols and Mountaineers came in 2018 … in this exact game. A home-and-home with games in Knoxville and Morgantown would have been a bigger hit with both fan bases than a redux of West Virginia’s 40-14 win a decade earlier. In the game then called the Belk College Kickoff, the Will Grier-led Mountaineers surged in the second half after a weather delay to spoil Jeremy Pruitt’s debut as Tennessee’s coach in front of an announced crowd of 66,793.

West Virginia started that 2018 season 8-1 and reached as high as No. 9 in the rankings before losing to Oklahoma State and Oklahoma, dropping a bowl game to Syracuse and seeing Dana Holgorsen bail for Houston. Neal Brown has been the Mountaineers’ coach since, compiling a 31-29 record and moving off the hot seat with a nine-win 2023 season. Tennessee and West Virginia would have played in the 2020 Liberty Bowl had the Vols not had to withdraw due to Covid-19 issues.

• Date(s): September 1, 2029 at Neyland Stadium, and September 7, 2030 in Seattle
• Payout: The visiting team gets $300,000.
• When the game contract was signed: December 14, 2021

Tennessee will trim the list of Power Four programs it has never played from seven to six with this series, which features two of the three stadiums in college football that are accessible by boat. (Baylor’s McLane Stadium joins the more-than-century-old duo of Neyland Stadium and Husky Stadium with such a distinction.) The other P4 teams the Vols have never played are Arizona, Arizona State, Illinois, Michigan State, Stanford and UCF.

Washington’s move to the Big Ten was one of the death knells to the Pac-12 (RIP). Tennessee had recent history with the West Coast conference of champions through home-and-home series with California (2006 and 2007), UCLA (2009 and 2009) and Oregon (2010 and 2013), but the 59-14 loss to the Ducks in Eugene will be the Vols’ final game against the now-defunct league. Washington’s most recent game against the SEC was a 21-16 loss to Auburn in a top-10 matchup in Atlanta in the 2018 opener.