Knoxville: America's best college football town. But can we handle the title?
by David Madison
By crowning Knoxville the king of college football towns this year, The Sporting News supplied a Neyland Stadium-sized dose of what serious college football towns want most: Validation.
An undying thirst for recognition is the mark of a truly ambitious college sports town. Knoxville and a few other rabid hives of college ball are constantly trying to get themselves noticed. Having school colors that can double as safety wear during deer season helps turn a few heads. Posting a 13-0 season and winning a national championship are two other respectable resumé bullets. And producing a class act like Peyton Manning—who loved his home base so much he stuck around all four years—helps give Knoxville a superior edge.
But as The Sporting News noted, what puts Knoxville over the top is its ability to accommodate the excesses of Vol fans. "Average attendance at Tennessee's six home games in 1998 was 106,914," wrote TSN, duly noting that Neyland is supposed to seat only 102,544. "The math: The Vols played to 104 percent capacity at the second-largest college stadium in America (only Michigan's expanded stadium seats more)."
More than any other stat used to compare college football towns—number of tailgate parties, ratio of married couples to matching monogram sweaters, percentage of body surface painted with team colors—game attendance remains the gold standard of college pep. People sardine themselves into Neyland because they want to prove their loyalty and validate the Vol cause.
Tennessee fans also simply love the game. But in the top tier of college football towns, fans must be constantly reminded about how much they love the game—about how great it is to be a Vol, and how tragic it is to be anything else, especially a Gator.
Above McMillan Clothing Inc. on Cumberland Avenue, a banner reads, "Tennessee football is life, everything else are just details." And judging by the T-shirts on sale at McMillan's, proudly stitched Vol wear is indeed the stuff of life in Knoxville. These cotton Ts are badges of allegiance and proof of a superior IQ. One shirt ribs lowly Georgia boosters by listing things you'll never hear a bulldog fan say, such as "wrasslin's fake" and "checkmate."
Another shirt tries to stir UT's brainy side into the "football is life" mix. It plugs the two Nobel laureates, seven Rhodes Scholars and 10 astronauts who graduated from the university. With coy sarcasm, the shirt then delivers its punch line: "We also play a little football."
How true, how true. In some ways, Tennessee's gridiron tradition has turned Knoxville into the Gatlinburg of college football. Instead of fudge shops and trinket stores, there are purveyors of school spirit like McMillan's and a slew of sports bars.
Instead of tourists, there are packs of marauding fans.
On Jan. 4, after UT's national championship win over Florida State, more than 200 public safety officers were on the street trying to keep a lid on the post-Fiesta Bowl festivities. On an average football Saturday, 50 officers walk the strip, sometimes making as many as 50 arrests [see "Not-So-Great Moments in UT Football History"].
Last year after the Vols broke their painfully long losing streak against Florida, fans rushed the field and tore down both goal posts. Most self-respecting college football towns have seen what a mob can do to a pair of uprights. In Gainesville, which TSN ranked as the fourth best college football town, fans who rush the field after a game are subject to arrest. And in Birmingham, police officers on horseback beat back the crowds when Alabama plays in the state capital.
These cities are apparently unwilling to go the extra yard and allow the wanton destruction of $3,500 goal posts.
"There's no sense in trying to stop them," says Bob Davis, who's seen eight to 10 posts destroyed in his 34 years with the UT Athletic Department. After the Florida game last season, Davis says both goal posts were pulled down and 170 hunks of sod were removed by soil-lusting fans.
The Big Orange frenzy also claimed 80 yards of sideline fence and broke a few seats in the stands. The damage to Neyland bothers Davis because it makes Vol fans look like they've never experienced a big win—never dealt with the euphoria of success.
"Why don't they act like they've been there before?" wonders Davis. "That's why I get upset with them. They act like the team has never been there before."
Then again, maybe it's the Vols' routine success that drives fans to post-game extremes. Perhaps great college football towns are distinguished by their ability to relive exciting games over and over and over again. If Knoxville began taking UT's success in stride, it might lose its fanatical edge. That's why it must continue to prove itself, with T-shirts, bent goal posts and other reminders that you scan never say "Go Vols!" loud enough.
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