The Tennessee Volunteers are 6 days away from playing Arkansas in Fayetteville. The game will be a 7:30 ET start on ABC which will mark the 3rd time this year Tennessee has played in the primetime slot on the network. Tennessee comes in as a 14-point favorite according to DraftKings. For much of the 2010s Tennessee would never get a national TV primetime slot as a double-digit favorite on the road, but now things have changed. The SEC on ABC has picked Tennessee when they’ve played a decent opponent this season because of the draw that a great Tennessee team brings. Whether it be the always faithful Vol nation tuning in or fans of other SEC fanbases praying on our downfall, the viewer numbers always look good.

Tennessee is coming off a bye week and Arkansas is coming off a 21-17 loss to Texas A&M. While Arkansas is a decent team with a capable offense, they are a team Tennessee should handle business against. I know some of the more miserable factions of the Tennessee fanbase will point to Tennessee’s lack of a win in Fayetteville since 2001, but that stat is pretty meaningless. The 3 trips for the Vols to Fayetteville since the win in 2001 have featured 2 of the worst Tennessee teams of all time (2011,2020) and one of the Razorback’s best teams since the turn of the century(2006). Furthermore, didn’t Tennessee break a long-standing slump in their last game when they beat a top-15 team on the road for the first time since 2006? Many of the horrible streaks and records that the negavols point to are the result of Tennesse’s incompetence for the last 15 years, not some curse that is plaguing the program. Tennessee fans who “never take the cup off’ need to get a grip. This is a good team, not some average bunch led by Derek Dooley or Jeremy Pruitt.