Tennessee is the land grant university of the state and big brother to every other public university in the state. What do we have to gain by scheduling memfus in football? When we are where we should be, we get more than our fair share of football recruits. Basketball maybe, because memfus is at least traditionally relevant in that sport. MTSU and ETSU even less of an incentive to schedule. If we want to beat up on our state system little brothers like UTC and UTM, then once a decade to fill their coffers back up.
Tennessee needs to schedule P5 non conference foes that are relevant like OU, Oregon, UCLA, USC, Notre Dame, etc. Any sisters of the poor that we pay to play should be strategic imo.