ATLANTA — The Tennessee Volunteers will receive their first invitation to a New Year’s Six bowl game in nearly two decades Sunday afternoon, and the destination could be balmy.
Tennessee, which completed a 10-2 regular season with last weekend’s 56-0 thrashing of Vanderbilt in Nashville, has been linked in recent days to the Cotton, Orange and Sugar bowls, with the Orange Bowl on Dec. 30 in Miami Gardens, Florida, having emerged as the most likely location. The Orange Bowl, when it isn’t hosting a College Football Playoff national semifinal, will pair the highest-ranked team out of the Southeastern Conference or the Big Ten or Notre Dame with the winner of the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game.
The Vols have not played in the Orange Bowl since the 1997 season, when they fell to Nebraska 42-17 in Peyton Manning’s final game.
“We always enjoy having an SEC team in the Orange Bowl,” Matt Morrall of the Orange Bowl selection committee said Saturday afternoon. “They always travel well, and if Tennessee comes, it will be a fun crowd. Because it’s been so long, we expect it would generate a lot of excitement with Tennessee’s fan base, and they get to play somebody they’re familiar with.
“Tennessee has played Clemson in the past, and North Carolina fits that bill as well if it’s North Carolina. We expect it to generate a lot of excitement not only with the competing fan bases but our local fan base, so that’s good for college football.”