Josh Heupel’s Tennessee Volunteers could be walking into a night game at the SEC’s biggest stadium this upcoming fall, but we don’t exactly know whether that’s true just yet.
In the third-to-last game of the regular season, Tennessee will travel to College Station, TX, for a matchup with Texas A&M. The Aggies made it to the College Football Playoffs last season and lost to Miami, the nation’s championship runner-up, in a low-scoring game in the first round. Texas A&M is projected to be a Top 5 team in the conference again this season.
Tennessee Football released its game-time windows for the 2026 season last week. The Texas A&M contest has a “Flex” time slot, which means that it could be played between 3:30-4:30 p.m. ET or 6-8 p.m. ET. Considering how late it is in the season, it’s hard to project whether it’ll land in the afternoon or at night at this time.
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Tennessee and Texas A&M have only played five total games in the history between the two programs. The first two meetings were in bowl games, with Tennessee winning the 1957 Gator Bowl and the 2005 Cotton Bowl. The Aggies won in 2016 and 2020 in College Station and Knoxville, respectively, and Tennessee then won in Knoxville in 2023.
This fall’s matchup between the two will be just the sixth game between the two programs. Tennessee currently leads the series 3-2.
This season will be the first year of the new nine-game conference schedule for SEC teams. The new format also requires each SEC team to play a non-conference Power 4 team, of which Tennessee will do so in the second week of the season in a road game against Georgia Tech.
What we know from Tennessee’s schedule is that the Week 1 game against Furman is set for 3:30 p.m., the Week 2 game at Georgia Tech is set for 7:00 p.m., the Week 3 game against Kennesaw State is set for 7:30 p.m., and the Week 4 game against Texas is set for Noon.
The only games that aren’t locked into Flex spots are at South Carolina (afternoon), against Kentucky (night), and at Vanderbilt (night).
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