KNOXVILLE — The University of Tennessee football seniors have seen plenty during their wildly inconsistent time with the Volunteers.

The Vols played in last season’s Southeastern Conference championship game, but they’ve missed two bowl trips in four years.

UT has won in some of the game’s toughest venues, but it lost a homecoming game to Wyoming two weeks ago.

Saturday will be another new endeavor for the Vols (3-7, 1-5). They will visit bowl-eligible Vanderbilt (6-4, 4-3) as three-point underdogs.

“It’s different,” UT junior quarterback Jonathan Crompton said. “The roles are reversed.”

That’s an understatement.

Not than either team’s fan base needs a reminder, but Vandy has beaten the Vols once in the past 25 years, and twice since 1976.

“Each Saturday is its own Saturday,” UT senior offensive tackle Ramon Foster said. “Those underdog things are for the birds, really.

“Vanderbilt is going to come out there and play us hard, like always. ... But yeah, they’re already bowl-eligible, and they’ve got all the swagger about themselves now.”

The Commodores reached the six-win plateau last week for the first time since 1982 by winning at Kentucky — which, unlike the Vols, also can play a postseason game.

Vanderbilt now hopes to secure its first winning season since that same year, when the World’s Fair was in Knoxville and Ronald Reagan was nearing the midway point of his first presidential term.

“I think obviously it took a little weight off our shoulders — especially our players, they hear so much about it,” Commodores coach Bobby Johnson said. “But they were pretty even keel the whole time. I didn’t think it was affecting it as much as most people did.

“I know Tennessee’s got their attention. I don’t think there’s going to be any negative effect.”

Vanderbilt shut out the Vols, 26-0, in 1954. Since that day, UT has lost just twice in the Music City.

“There’s been a lot of close games in there, but yeah, we’ve traditionally played well against these guys,” Foster said.

By most accounts, Johnson’s 26-51 overall record and 12-41 SEC mark in seven seasons at Vandy don’t do justice to how far he’s taken that program. Johnson was 6-29 his first three seasons in Nashville, with just two wins in 25 SEC games.

The Commodores won in Neyland Stadium in 2005, and at Georgia’s Sanford Stadium the next season.

“We certainly are in better shape than we were when we first got here as a staff,” Johnson said.

UT defensive coordinator John Chavis praised Johnson for turning Vanderbilt into a “well-coached football team that has talent.

“There’s no question about this: I think the staff and the head coach, I think they do as good of a job coaching as anyone in this league,” Chavis continued. “When you turn on the film and you watch them compete, then you’re going to be impressed with them. Not scheme-wise. I don’t mean to take away from their scheme, but they’re not really, really complicated.

“But I think that’s a compliment. They do what they do very, very well. They are as well-coached as anybody in the league.”

Johnson said his team needed to walk a fine mental line this week. He said his players need to focus on UT’s potential, not its production.

“You still look over there and see a very good football team with very good athletes,” he said. “It raises your level of play when you see those kinds of athletes. That’s what it’s done for us.

“We know we have to prepare well. We know we have to play well. We were not doing what we needed to do at the beginning of this series. We had no choice. We had to go up.”

Chavis said Johnson has “gotten (Vanderbilt) to play at a level consistently where other people haven’t been able to do that.

“Whatever it is he’s sold them, they’ve bought into, and they believe in him,” Chavis added. “I think that’s the biggest thing about coaching. There’s a lot of things out there — window dressings, and those kinds of things — but what you have to be able to do is you have to relate to kids. You have to be able to get them to believe in what you’re going, and you have to have a good product to sell them.

“And I think that’s exactly what he’s done.”

Vanderbilt nearly kept UT out of last season’s SEC championship game, but the Vols made a late field goal and watched a Commodores kick glance off the upright in a 25-24 thriller at Neyland.

“We’ve got to show Vanderbilt respect,” Foster said. “They’ve become a good team in the SEC. They beat us once, and almost did it again last year. They’re well-coached, and they’ve got good players.

“You can’t just show up and beat those guys.”

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