According to Volquest.com, the University of Tennessee, UCLA and ESPN have finalized negotiations to reschedule the Vols-Bruins game this upcoming season for Labor Day.
The deal will be announced this afternoon, but Volquest’s John Brice got a great scoop to have the news up front. The Sept. 1 game will give the Vols two more days of preparation before their season opener. They also shuffled their schedule, moving the UAB game to Sept. 13, with an open date in between. The open date (the first of two for UT) is also beneficial for the Vols, who won’t have to make a quick turnaround after a trip back from the West Coast for the opener.
UT will have two home games — the 13th against the Blazers and the 20th versus Florida — before traveling to Auburn. The final open date will be Nov. 15 after a game against Wyoming and before the traditional season-closers against Vanderbilt and Kentucky.
Now, the nation will get to see the Vols’ new coaches’ debut in primetime, though this will give the national media every opportunity to spend an entire broadcast talking about the offensive genius combination of OC Norm Chow and head coach Rick Neuheisel, who also will be making their Bruins debut.
The game is set to kick off at 7:30 central time and will provide a huge audience for a big intraconference, cross-country game. The last time UT traveled out West, of course, was last year’s debacle against California when an inexperienced secondary was torched consistently and a revamped defensive front failed to get any push against the Bears.
This year, the secondary should be Tennessee’s biggest strength against two coaches who historically love to throw the ball. It should be a very intriguing matchup, to say the least.
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Wow, no open date before Alabama two years in a row? Has Fulmer/UT lost their mind?
I’ll probably watch the game and laugh at how much ESPN will hate on UT because they always do, just like they do to Alabama as well.
I like it. I guess the glut of night games played on the first Saturday of the season wouldn’t have showcased this game as it should be. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
ESPN seems to believe that a conference can only hold two premier teams at a time. I think it’s an artifact of their Big-11 tendencies, where you usually do have only two elite teams. It doesn’t hurt that the Rose Bowl rival - the PAC-10 is good for only 1 or 2 teams as well (currently USC and Oregon because Cal disappointed last year). The same applies to the Big 12 (Okie and Texas; Missouri and Kansas are “upstarts”, dangit!), the ACC (snicker, but it was V-Tech and Matt Ryan last year), and the Big East had WVU and somebody. Even the WAC had Boise and Hawaii!
Right now, Florida and LSU are their SEC babies, though they seem willing to give UGA a shot at displacing Florida this year. So it’s no surprise that their broadcasts of UA and UT games aren’t particularly enthusiastic - their team-per-lobe quota has been met in their brains.