Tennessee
Tennessee Football Returns to Neyland Stadium in 100 Days | Rocky Top Insider
The countdown is officially on.
There are 100 days left on the calendar until Tennessee’s season opener as of Thursday.
While the summer doesn’t present too many storylines heading into the fall, the big note to look for during July is SEC Media Days. The addition of Texas and Oklahoma into the Southeastern Conference only adds to the magnitude of the upcoming season, with perhaps no better fitting place for the event than Dallas, TX.
Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel is set for Day 2 of the event on July 16 alongside Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Missouri’s Eliah Drinkwitz, and Oklahoma’s Brent Venables.
Training camp will begin in August on the other side of SEC Media Days as Tennessee gets ready for the season ahead. The Vols have been commonly tagged as a Top 20 preseason team on the fringe of the Top 15 with quarterback Nico Iamaleava as a darkhorse Heisman contender. Tennessee also boasts EDGE rusher James Pearce Jr., who could solidify his spot as the No. 1 overall draft pick in the 2025 NFL Draft with a strong showing.
Tennessee opens up the 2024 season in a home contest against Chattanooga on August 31. The Vols will quickly hit the road, though, with a likely Top 25 non-conference game under the lights in Charlotte, NC, against NC State in week two. Tennessee then returns home for a non-conference game against Kent State before taking off for unfamiliar territory in their first SEC game against Oklahoma in Norman, OK.
After an open date closes the final weekend of September for Tennessee, the Vols head out to Arkansas for a second-straight road SEC game to open the conference slate before returning to Knoxville for a pair of high-profile rivalry games. Tennessee will host Florida and Alabama in back-to-back weeks in October before another open date closes down the month.
With five weekends in the month of November, Tennessee will face their longest stretch of games to close the season with back-to-back home games against Kentucky and Mississippi State before traveling to Athens, GA, for a matchup with Georgia on Nov. 16. Tennessee then returns home for the home-finale against UTEP before the season-finale against Vanderbilt in Nashville.
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Here’s a look at the key dates you need to know with 100 days between now and the start of the Vols’ 2024 season:
July
SEC Media Days (Dallas, TX)
- July 15: Brian Kelly, Lane Kiffin, Shane Beamer, Clark Lea
- July 16: Kirby Smart, Eliah Drinkwitz, Brent Venables, Josh Heupel
- July 17: Kalen DeBoer, Billy Napier, Jeff Lebby, Steve Sarkisian
- July 18: Sam Pittman, Hugh Freeze, Mark Stoops, Mike Elko
August
- TBA: Start of Tennessee Football fall camp
- Aug. 31: Chattanooga at Tennessee (Knoxville)
September
- Sep. 7: Tennessee vs NC State (Charlotte, NC)
- Sep. 14: Kent State at Tennessee (Knoxville)
- Sep. 21: Tennessee at Oklahoma (Norman, OK)
- Sep. 28: OPEN
October
- Oct. 5: Tennessee at Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR)
- Oct. 12: Florida at Tennessee (Knoxville)
- Oct. 19: Alabama at Tennessee (Knoxville)
- Oct. 26: OPEN
November
- Nov. 2: Kentucky at Tennessee (Knoxville)
- Nov. 9: Mississippi State at Tennessee (Knoxville)
- Nov. 16: Tennessee at Georgia (Athens, GA)
- Nov. 23: UTEP at Tennessee (Knoxville)
- Nov. 30: Tennessee at Vanderbilt (Nashville, TN)
December
- Dec. 7: SEC Championship (Atlanta, GA)
- Dec. 20-21: CFP First Round
- Dec. 31: Fiesta Bowl (Quarterfinals)
January
- Jan. 1: Peach Bowl (Quarterfinals)
- Jan. 1: Sugar Bowl (Quarterfinals)
- Jan. 1: Rose Bowl (Quarterfinals)
- Jan. 9: Orange Bowl (Semifinals)
- Jan. 10: Cotton Bowl (Semifinals)
- Jan. 20: National Championship (Atlanta, GA)
1⃣0⃣0⃣ 𝚍𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚞𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚕 𝚔𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚘𝚏𝚏
The countdown is on… 🗓️#GBO 🍊 pic.twitter.com/Au7KYg6t3L
— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) May 23, 2024
Former Tennessee baseball pitcher Garrett Stallings was called up by the Milwaukee Brewers on June 30.
Stallings, 28, likely will make his major league debut against the Cincinnati Reds on June 30 in the second game of the Brewers’ four-game homestand.
Stallings played at Tennessee from 2017 to 2019 in the early years of Tony Vitello’s stint at the Vols’ head coach. He earned a starting role as a freshman and became the ace by his junior season.
In 2019, the Los Angeles Angels selected Stallings in the fifth round of the MLB draft. He bounced around in the minors before landing firmly in Triple-A with the Norfolk Tides, and later the Brewers’ affiliate Nashville Sounds, in 2024.
Stallings posted a 3-3 record with the Sounds in 2026 with a 3.45 ERA and 59 strikeouts in 62⅔ innings.
He will be the 54th player in Tennessee history to reach the major leagues and the 12th since 2020. He will join left-hander Garrett Crochet (2020); right-hander Ben Joyce (2023); infielder Andre Lipcius (2023); IF Trey Lipscomb (2024); outfielder Jordan Beck (2024); RHP Seth Halvorsen (2024); RHP Chase Dollander (2025); RHP Blade Tidwell (2025); INF Christian Moore (2025); OF Drew Gilbert (2025); and RHP Chad Dallas (2026).
Dallas made his debut for the Toronto Blue Jays on June 4.
Wynton Jackson covers high school sports for Knox News. Email: wynton.jackson@knoxnews.com
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BELL BUCKLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The poet laureate of Tennessee has just died. Margaret Britton Vaughn was 87-years-old. Friends knew Vaughn as hilarious, talented, and deeply unique.
Visiting Bell Buckle, Tennessee over the years, I’ve just found this little place has so many artists. A proud addition to that is Vaughn.
“When Maggi was your friend, you knew you had a friend,” said longtime friend Annie Rooney. “It wasn’t if you’re rich or poor or have four matching tires on your car, she was your friend.”
Going way back, Vaughn was a songwriter for some country greats.
“Loretta Lynn, yes!” said friend Carla Webb.
To understand the uniqueness of Vaughn, listen to this story.
“Maggi says, ‘honey, you wanna go to the movies with me?’” friend Billy Phillips remembered.
Phillips was nine when he and Vaughn became friends and took a trip to the Carpi Theatre in Shelbyville.
“When I get into the car, there were 200 empty boxes of chocolate bunny rabbits!” Phillips laughed.
“She loved chocolate,” Rooney agreed.
“It couldn’t be hollow milk chocolate,” Phillips continued. “It had to be solid milk chocolate.”
That was just one of many loves. One of the times I got to talk to Vaughn was in 2023. She was selling eclectic things she’d collected. They included a typewriter built out of clothes hangers and a lamp made of forks and spoons.
“Maggi had a lot of stuff!” Phillips said.
She’d call around to antique shops.
“Got anything that looks like me, honey?” Rooney laughed, remembering Vaughn’s calls.
Talking to Vaughn, you came to understand something. She had a deep appreciation for the art and the artist who made it. That’s something that sprang from Vaughn being an artist herself.
“My mother looked down and said, ‘are you sure you don’t want to be a nurse?’” Vaughn told me in 2023. “I said, ‘no, momma. I wanna be a songwriter and a poet.’ People say, ‘Maggi, these books. You’ve written my life.’”
“Maggi had front porch books, not coffee table books,” Webb said.
“She was a poet of the people,” Rooney continued.
Vaughn took on prejudice in her work. She also wrote about all things she loved.
“She covered rural life, southern things,” Phillips said.
That writing carried her to become the poet laureate of Tennessee in 1995. The next year, she wrote Tennessee’s bicentennial poem.
“I gave her her last kiss the other day,” Webb said.
“I’m on the verge of tears,” Phillips added. “This will be a real gut punch.”
Asking around town, people seemed to agree on their favorite of Vaughn’s works.
“Is That You Mama?” Phillips said, naming one of Vaughn’s poems.
Webb read me an excerpt of the poem. It ended with these lines;
“Well, mama, I’m okay now. You tell the Lord I said hi. Was that you, mama, that just kissed me bye?”
“Maggi was a true original, and Bell Buckle was proud to call her our own,” Phillips said.
Do you have a positive, good news story? You can email me at forrest.sanders@newschannel5.com.
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