It may be last minute, but Tennessee Football and the UCLA Bruins need to work playing each other into their schedule. Other last-minute moves have been made before a season, and for the sake of the sport, there would be too much excitement for both teams for this not to happen.
The Vols would be facing their former $2 million quarterback in Nico Iamaleava, who they declared open war on the NCAA for. Iamaleava’s public exit to DeShaun Foster’s program is obviously the biggest reason, as he would be facing his former team, and with him likely going to the NFL next year, this year would be his only chance to face UT.
Joey Aguilar is obviously the other storyline, as he transferred from the Appalachian State Mountaineers to UCLA this past offseason and practiced all spring with the Bruins. He then transferred to Tennessee Football after UCLA went and added Iamaleava, so it’s a swap of quarterbacks.
Since he didn’t ever play for UCLA, Aguilar with the Vols is not as big of a storyline as Iamaleava with UCLA. However, Iamaleava technically could have another chance to play UT next year, and Aguilar is out of eligibility by then, so this is his only chance for this to work out.
Beyond those two major reasons, these programs have a deep history of playing each other in regular season non-conference games dating back to the memorable 1965 showdown in Memphis when Dewey Warren had his breakout game. There’s the UCLA win of 1967, the legendary tie of 1985 and the Vols’ wins of 1989 and 1997.
Oh, and then there’s Tino Sunseri. Iamaleava’s camp threw shade on Josh Heupel’s offense and said that’s why they transferred to UCLA, where Sunseri is a first-year offensive coordinator. Sunseri was a quality control assistant for Tennessee Football in 2018, and his father, Sal Sunseri, was a disastrous defensive coordinator for the Vols in 2012.
Simply put, there is every reason in the world to make sure this happens. So how can they do it?
Well, it’s actually pretty easy. The Vols open the year against the Syracuse Orange on Aug. 30 in Atlanta. Meanwhile, UCLA opens the year at home against the Utah Utes that same day. Neither are conference games, so why don’t they all reach a consensus to just switch opponents?
Utah can play Syracuse, and Tennessee can play UCLA. Both can be at neutral sites.
Now, the tricky part is UCLA has a home-and-home scheduled with Utah and would be giving their home game up for this to happen. So what? They don’t have all of their future schedules set up, so why not just move their home showdown with Utah to 2027, 2028 or later? Problem solved.
In any case, this is a rare neutral site game where the money could outweigh a home-and-home for both schools. Put it in Denver. That’s not Big Ten or SEC country, it’s closer to UCLA, which would have a harder time getting fans to the game, and there’s an NFL stadium. It would be epic.
If a home and home is necessary, well then make that happen, but the point is this is a matchup that needs to be done. Tennessee Football and UCLA could benefit significantly from such a move. The SEC and Big Ten should get involved along with both schools for this.
