Tennessee didn’t have much time to enjoy their dominant win over Alabama before the chatter began. The Volunteers, now ranked 11th in the country and in the thick of the College Football Playoff battle, had a road trip to South Carolina looming on the schedule next.
A first look at the Sunday line showed Tennessee as a 1.5 point favorite. By Sunday night, that line had flipped through zero, with the Gamecocks showing as a 2.5 point favorite.
The oddsmakers have a way of sniffing stuff like this out. They did a similar thing a few weeks back, with South Carolina closing as a 2.5 point favorite over Kentucky. The Wildcats won a dramatic one late, 35-34. That game was coming in a spot where the Gamecocks were coming off of two straight losses.
Tennessee has some experience in this exact spot. Well, at least Josh Heupel does. The Volunteers were seemingly on cruise control on their way to a berth in the 4-team College Football Playoff when disaster struck in Columbia back in 2022. Tennessee was hit in the mouth by South Carolina’s offense, and never recovered, taking an embarrassing loss that knocked them out of the hunt.
“I did this morning,” Josh Heupel said, when asked if he would show his team the 2022 debacle.
That moment clearly still lives with Heupel, just as it does with all of us. Williams-Brice has proven to be a tough play for Tennessee to win at over the last decade, and the oddsmakers are telling you the Volunteers are in for another fight on Saturday afternoon.
“Understand the type of environment you’re getting into,” Heupel said of the road trip. “Understand the approach of your opponent. You’re stepping into a ring. You better understand your opponent and be prepared to be physical, mental and emotional at your peak.”
Heupel isn’t short on ammunition to motivate his team this week. Forget rat poison, this is the opposite. This is some of that Kirby Smart, nobody-believes-in-us type of stuff, except Heupel doesn’t have to make his examples up. It’s been difficult to find a single analyst or talking head out there that’s taking Tennessee to win this week. That’s an odd spot for the No. 11 team in the country taking on a 3-3 squad.
“Every week is a new season inside of this league,” Heupel said. “That’s whether you’re playing at home or on the road. The margins are just, they’re small, they’re tight. A play here, a call there make a huge difference. So, you’ve got to be on the right side of it in your preparation.”
The setup is there. South Carolina looked great in their destruction of Florida. They took that momentum and got a week off to prepare for Tennessee, who they get at home. The Volunteers have played for seven straight weeks without a bye, and they’ll be coming off of a physical win over top rival Alabama. The setup couldn’t be any better.
“The fact that they’ve got an extra week with the bye last week,” Heupel explained. “Physically, they’ll be as fresh as you can be at this point in the season, extra week of preparation, road environment. We’ve pointed to all those things with our team.”
Tennessee very clearly is not taking South Carolina lightly. They hear all the noise, Josh Heupel has lived it. This has gone from “trap game” to outright underdog status, it seems. Something tells me that’s just the way Heupel would want this week to be.
Kickoff is set for Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.