The Southern Line
Tennessee-Alabama, SEC's first televised event, returns Saturday with Alabama favored
Vols Wire looks back at the 1951 Tennessee-Alabama game, the first televised event in SEC history, ahead of Saturday's top-15 meeting in Knoxville.
The first televised event in Southeastern Conference history was a Tennessee-Alabama football game. The two programs meet again Saturday, both ranked and both 5-1.
Vols Wire looked back at the 1951 meeting this week. The game was tied 7-7 at halftime before Tennessee pulled away in the second half. Dick Ernsberger put the Volunteers ahead 14-7 on a 3-yard touchdown run in the third quarter. Hank Lauricella then broke off a 35-yard scoring run to make it 21-7.
Alabama didn't fold. Marlow scored his second rushing touchdown of the day to cut the deficit to 21-13. Tennessee closed out the scoring with a 20-yard touchdown pass from Herky Payne to Vince Kaseta.
Lauricella carried the Tennessee offense. According to Vols Wire, he completed 9 of 16 passes for 113 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions. He also ran for 108 yards and a score on 15 carries. Lauricella finished runner-up for the Heisman Trophy that season. Tennessee went 10-1, finished 5-0 in the SEC and won a national championship under Robert Neyland, whose name is now on the stadium where Saturday's game will be played.
The rivalry has been a regular TV fixture for decades since then, and this year's game fits that history. No. 6 Alabama visits No. 14 Tennessee at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, Oct. 17, with ABC carrying the national broadcast. Each team has one loss, so the result will shape both the SEC race and the playoff picture over the second half of the season.
The market has the Crimson Tide clearly ahead. Alabama is favored at -326 on Novig, one of the venues listing the game, and theScore Bet has the best sportsbook price on Alabama at -320. Tennessee is getting 9.5 points, and the total sits at 51.5. Full pricing is on the game page.
The line suggests the Volunteers will need something like the 1951 second half to win: a tie game that turns on a few long plays from the home side. Tennessee is coming off a home game against Auburn on Oct. 3, and it wore its Neyland Legacy Smokey Grey uniforms for that one. Alabama comes to Knoxville as a top-10 team with something to protect.
More than seven decades after the SEC's first broadcast, the matchup still draws a big national audience. Kickoff is Saturday afternoon at Neyland Stadium.
