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SEC stunner: Arkansas, Vanderbilt make history with upset wins
By Paul Harvey
Published:
SEC football is not for the weak at heart. Alabama and Tennessee were reminded of that fact the hard way.
Week 6 ushered in the start of October, and boy, did it make a memorable mark on the landscape of the college football season!
Throughout the day, 4 of the top 10 teams (and 5 of the top 11 teams) were upset. (That doesn’t account for No. 8 Miami struggling against unranked Cal in a late-night matchup.) In fact, 3 of those games involving top 10 teams included an unranked team pulling off a stunner with a pair of top 5 SEC teams falling to unranked opponents.
Alabama was involved with the wackiness after previously filling the void as the No. 1 team in the country after beating Georgia last weekend. This weekend, the Crimson Tide were stunned in a road loss to Vanderbilt, giving the SEC the first top 5 team to lose to an unranked opponent.
In primetime, No. 4 Tennessee fell apart on the road vs. Arkansas. After building a 14-3 lead, the Vols watched as the Razorbacks scored the final 16 points in a 19-14 upset.
During the live broadcast of the primetime game, ESPN’s Chris Fowler revealed it is the first time in the history of the SEC that a pair of top 5 teams have fallen to an unranked opponent on the same day. The new era of the Playoff may give new life to the postseason hopes of those teams, but that doesn’t change what is already one of the wilder starts to the college football season.
Paul Harvey lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football.
