John Pennington analyzes the Tennessee Volunteers’ supposed home field advantage and finds a recent history of blow-out losses in big games at home.

Pennington also compares and contrasts the Volunteers’ performance in big games on the road.

Matthew Zemek, of College Football News, has a message for Georgia Bulldog quarterback D.J. Shockley: Your season starts this weekend against the Tennessee Volunteers at Rocky Top.

But as big as any Tennessee game naturally is for the Dawgs, D.J., you also need to realize two other things that make this Saturday’s showdown sing with significance.

First, the fact that Tennessee lost to Florida—coupled with the Gators’ subsequent loss to Alabama—means that with a win, you can knock the Vols out of the SEC East race and put Florida in must-win territory on Oct. 15 when the Gators travel to Baton Rouge to face LSU. Basically, D.J., a win Saturday and you’re in substantial control of your SEC East fate. You’d get Reverend Coach Richt back to Atlanta, enabling Georgia to take a trip to the Georgia Dome for the third time in four seasons. That’s a pretty big source of both potential and pressure this Saturday afternoon.

As long as the team is not too beat up, it’s probably to Tennessee’s advantage that it has already played two top ten teams, while Georgia’s schedule has been a cakewalk so far. Not only will this be Georgia’s toughest opponent by far this year, it will be the Dawgs’ first SEC away game. Florida’s first away game, at Alabama, didn’t pan out so well for them.

On the other hand, the Bulldogs have had the Vols’ number since Coach Mark Richt took over, other than last year, when the team might have been suffering from the Spotlight Effect, having been dreaming of a national championship after a huge win against LSU the week before.

Plus, Rick Clausen is beat up (sore shoulder, strained Achilles, and two dislocated fingers on his non-throwing hand), and come Saturday, the Dawgs will have had two weeks to prepare for the Vols. Richt reportedly doesn’t lose after open dates.

Zemek is right. This game’s all about D.J. Shockley versus the UT defense.

It should be an excellent game.

College Football News’ weekly Road to the Rose Bowl is up. There are 6 Unbeaten Contenders (Southern Cal, Texas, Virginia Tech, Florida State, Georgia, and Alabama), 6 Unbeaten Longshots (Cal, Wisconsin, Penn State, UCLA, Texas Tech, and Nebraska), and 17 No Margin for Errors (including Tennessee). The Tennessee Volunteers get a couple of chances to decrease the number of Unbeaten Contenders over the next couple of weeks, as they host the Georgia Bulldogs this Saturday (CFN’s lock-yourself-in-a-room-to-watch game) and travel to take on the Alabama Crimson Tide two weeks after that.