How to Watch the 2025 Music City Bowl (Illinois vs. Tennessee)
Game Time: 4:30 p.m. Tuesday
TV Channel: ESPN
Online Streaming: ESPN+
Odds: ILL +6.5, O/U 61.5
Quick Hits:
Illinois Fighting Illini (8-4, 5-4 Big Ten)
Head Coach: Bret Bielema (5th season)
Last Game: Illinois 20, Northwestern 13
Gameday Reading:
Tennessee Volunteers (8-4, 4-4 SEC)
Head coach: Josh Heupel (5th season)
Last game: Vanderbilt 45, Tennessee 24
What Happened the Last Time These Two Teams Played?
- First-ever matchup!
Illinois’ last bowl game: Citrus Bowl (Dec. 21, 2024): Illinois 21, South Carolina 17
ORLANDO, Fla. — Late in the fourth quarter of the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl, South Carolina had the opportunity to retake a lead and on fourth-and-four from the Illinois seven-yard line. In the most critical moment for the defense, the Illini forced
an incompletion in the endzone to hand the ball back to Luke Altmyer and the offense with 3:08 left on the clock.
Cue the music.
On third and two on his own 15-yard line, running back Josh McCray took the handoff from Luke Altmyer and ran like his life depended on it for not just the first down, but 60 yards. We’re not sure if he let the defender catch up to him or if he went down to run the clock, but it was the final nail in the South Carolina-shaped coffin.
For the first time in 23 years, the Illinois Fighting Illini football program has won 10 games in a single season, taking down the South Carolina Gamecocks in the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, 21-17.
In what often tends to be a somewhat meaningless reconciliation game for programs unable to make it to the College Football Playoff, soon turned into a tension-filled postseason-like contest.
At the end of the third quarter, while tending to an injured Jaheim Clarke in front of the South Carolina sideline, Illinois head coach Bret Bielema taunted South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer, to which the latter charged the field and had to be restrained by his staff.
The taunt stems from an argument that Illinois was taking too much time to sub defensively, forcing South Carolina to use their timeouts prematurely. Bielema promptly responded by using the official’s signal for substituting while eyeing down Beamer on the South Carolina sideline.
