The best college football game for each week in October
By Austin Lloyd
Week 8: Tennessee at Alabama (Oct. 21)
When covering important college football clashes from the month of October, a Southeastern rivalry known as the “Third Saturday in October” feels worthy of some recognition for what should be obvious reasons—and those reasons become even more obvious when looking at the teams that partake in it, Tennessee and Alabama.
SEC football fans are probably happy to be back in an era where this showdown actually means something, as before 2022, it had been on a horrendously cold streak (the Crimson Tide had won the last 15). The blame for such a severe lack of competitiveness falls on head coach Nick Saban, as the Tide’s uninterrupted stretch of domination began back in 2007, his first season in Tuscaloosa.
Luckily for all of Knoxville, Tennessee HC Josh Heupel managed to turn the once-great program back around overnight and, in just his second season with the Vols, led them to a 52-49 victory over Bama.
Similarly to the aforementioned deathmatch between the Huskies and Ducks, it all came down to a tie-breaking field goal. But, the circumstances were even better this time around, as the ball awkwardly twirled through the uprights just as the final second ticked off the clock.
This year’s edition of the rivalry will be in the Tide’s neck of the woods and neither teams’ star QB will be returning to play in it, making for what will hopefully be anyone’s game. And as we said with September’s South Carolina/Tennessee matchup, this has the potential to shake up the postseason landscape of college football’s best conference—if a game can have that kind of influence, it deserves to be in this kind of conversation. End of story.