Riley Green & Peyton Manning – Alabama Vs. Tennessee

Five days before the Tide and the Vols kick off in Knoxville, Tennessee’s most famous quarterback turned up singing on an Alabama singer’s record.

The most famous quarterback in Tennessee history has never recorded a country song, and when he finally did, it was on a record by a singer from Jacksonville, Alabama. Nashville Harbor Records & Entertainment released Riley Green’s Alabama Vs. Tennessee, with Peyton Manning singing opposite him, on October 12, 2026, five days before the Crimson Tide and the Volunteers meet at Neyland Stadium for the Third Saturday in October. It arrived as a standalone single, not part of Green’s new album That’s Just Me, which came out on September 18.

Keep watching: Riley Green – Think As You Drunk · explore more →

Manning is not making a cameo. He sings through the whole song, trading lines with Green as each man argues for his side: Green for Alabama, Manning for the Vols he quarterbacked to a conference title in 1997. Manning has hosted the CMA Awards and appeared on Brad Paisley’s 2020 song No I in Beer, but this is the first time he carries half of a country record. The lyric works through the rivalry’s touchstones, from Rocky Top and Knoxville on one side to the Tide’s battle cry on the other. Then, instead of declaring a winner, it lands on what the two fan bases share: boots, country music and the same bar on game day.

Green wrote it with Erik Dylan and Wyatt McCubbin, two of the writers behind his summer hit Think As You Drunk, and he and Dylan produced it themselves. That is a different arrangement from That’s Just Me, which Dann Huff produced. It suits the record, a loose, slow acoustic groove built for trading jabs rather than for radio polish.

The official video, released through Green’s VEVO channel, puts the two rivals in a honky-tonk with drinks on the table and Green on acoustic guitar. Manning wears a checkered orange-and-white shirt, so there is no mistaking whose side he is on. The rivalry is not new territory for Green: he name-checked it on his 2022 song Hell of a Way to Go, and he played quarterback himself at Jacksonville State.

The song caps a crowded season for him. That’s Just Me opened at No.3 on the Billboard 200, his first Top 10 album. He has also started as a coach on NBC’s The Voice and announced a 2027 headlining tour named for the album. He turns 38 on October 18, the day after kickoff. Whoever wins in Knoxville, the song has already settled its own argument: two men who will pull for opposite teams on Saturday can still share a bar and a chorus.