The case for spring football games and potential matchups for Tennessee

In less than two weeks Neyland Stadium will see its first semblance of a game since November and its last until September.

Tennessee will wrap up spring practices with the Orange and White Game and fans–undoubtedly starved for football on the heels of an 11-win season–will show up to watch the Vols play against each other.

This version of Tennessee's annual spring scrimmage will be much like the others before it. It will provide those in attendance with a very small sample size of what awaits them in five months.

Joe Milton III will lead the starting offense. He'll toss a few touchdowns and make mistakes that some fans and pundits will likely read too much into. Highly touted freshman quarterback Nico Iamaleava will make a few head-turning plays that may stir up a quarterback controversy that doesn't exist. At least one newcomer on either side of the ball will score or make a key play that will provide plenty of postgame fodder and a some unrealistic expectations.

That will be it until fall camp starts in August, after all and the Big Orange faithful need something to talk about until quarterbacks, freshman phenoms and what's going on at those closed practices creep back up into everyday conversation before Tennessee opens it season against Virginia at Nissan Stadium in Nashville on Sept. 2.

This will be the case after every major college football program completes its spring games in the coming weeks.

But talking is what the offseason is for.

Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze offered up one talking point about spring football earlier this week, one that isn't new but has found its way back into the conversation: spring football games against actual opponents.

"I just think it would be great for the sport," Freeze told reporters on Monday. "I think it'd be awesome. NFL gets to scrimmage against each other, high schools get to scrimmage against each other. For the life of me, I don't understand why we haven't gotten to that point where we can pull that off."

It would certainly be entertaining.

The obvious scrimmage rules would still be in place such as quarterbacks wearing non-contact jerseys and other aspects meant to limit injuries.

The outcome of the game would be meaningless, so there would be no need to dive into the playbook, expose anything of significance or put players in situations of high risk, which is how spring games are already played.

Like anything else, there's pros and cons to the idea, but it's hard to argue that getting to see nearly a month of spring practice accumulate in something as close to a real live game that anyone is going to see until August would be rewarding.

Should college football ever go that route, here are some potential spring game matchups for Tennessee.

Conference realignment–both recent and decades ago–eliminated a number of traditional rivalries off of Tennessee's schedule that would be difficult to set up in the regular season now.

A transformed spring scrimmage could bring those kind of games back, though.

Georgia Tech fits that mold. On Tuesday, Knoxville sports radio host John Wilkerson of WNML 99.1 listed the Yellow Jackets as a hypothetical spring adversary of the Vols and it makes sense.

Tennessee and Georgia Tech began playing in 1902 and met every year but twice between 1954 and 1976.

So entrenched were the two programs in facing each other, the rivalry continued well after Georgia Tech bolted from the SEC in 1964.

After a 20-year hiatus, Tennessee and Georgia Tech opened the 2017 season in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, a game the Vols won 42-41 in a double-overtime thriller that ended on a goal line stand.

A spring game wouldn't have the same kind of luster as past clashes, but it would be worth watching just for the sake of seeing a couple of old school foes go at it.

Speaking of renewing rivalries against former conference teams, how could anyone alive imagine a scenario where Tennessee and Sewanee meet on a football field again?

The Tigers–now members of NCAA Division III– were charter members of the SEC before leaving in 1940 and played Tennessee 22 times, even rattling off a six-game win streak from 1903-13 when the two teams were in the now-defunct Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association.

Former Tennessee playing and coaching legend Johnny Majors' father Shirley Majors coached at Sewanee in the 1960s, so there's a lot of mutual history between the schools.

Tennessee playing a team within its borders would be beneficial.

There's a plethora of options.

Two competitive FCS programs are within a two hour drive from Knoxville in East Tennessee State and UT-Chattanooga.

Tennessee has played both teams in the last five years, facing ETSU in 2018 and Chattanooga in 2019. The Vols hold a commanding 40-2-1 edge in the series against Chattanooga.

ETSU has only played Tennessee once but is currently led by local high school coaching legend George Quarles who won 11 TSSAA state titles at nearby Maryville High School.

Those rosters are full of players from Tennessee that would likely relish the opportunity to play inside Neyland Stadium.

Also from the FCS ranks are Tennessee Tech, Tennessee State, UT Martin and Austin Peay. Even NCAA Division II and III Carson-Newman and Maryville College are a short drive from campus if Tennessee wanted to go the college basketball exhibition game course.

The more intriguing in-state games of course would be against the Memphis Tigers.

Tennessee and Memphis played on a semi-regular basis from 1968 until their last meeting in 2010.

Though Tennessee has a considerable advantage in the overall series at 22-1 (Memphis lone win came in 1996), the Tigers' program has enjoyed recent success in the American Athletic Conference.

With just three FBS teams teams in the state, a Tennessee-Memphis spring game gives the two programs a reason to renew their series and the occasional trip to the Liberty Bowl allows Vols fans in West Tennessee to see their favorite team up close in their own backyard.

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