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Our most expensive historical renovation project, by whatever pronunciation

by Jack Neely

About a year after its first unveiling, Knoxvillians are still ridiculing Market Square’s “$8 million facelift”: ridiculous, they say. A waste. They said similar things about the city’s construction of Volunteer Landing, another roughly $8 million project. A few years ago, a plan to save and use the historic S&W art-deco cafeteria was nixed because it might cost as much as $1 million.

But lately we’ve heard about a $108 million facelift for one big historic downtown building, and nobody bats an eye. That’s how it is when the historic downtown building in question is called Neyland Stadium. The huge renovation bill seems reasonable when we consider how many people use it at once.

Three or four years ago, I was showing a couple of Swiss journalists around town. Knoxville was a modest-sized city about the size of Geneva, they remarked, as we walked along Volunteer Landing downtown at dusk, but it reminded them more of Copenhagen. They liked the place. At about that moment, one of them spotted Neyland Stadium, and exclaimed, “What is that?” He inquired what sort of events were held there.

Only college football games, I said. Rarely anything else. They’d heard of American football, but didn’t know it was played on the college level. They asked how often games were played at Neyland Stadium.

“About six a year,” I said.

“No, it is impossible!” one of them sputtered, assuming we were misunderstanding each other. “But it is so big.” When I confirmed it, they laughed. They found that very, very funny. There are some big stadiums in Europe, they said, but they’re used much more often than that.

Clearly, these fellows didn’t understand American college football. But they bring up an interesting point.

Neyland Stadium holds about 110,000. Say it’s a perfect season, and we packed every single game: that’s 660,000. About two thirds of a million people. That’s a whole lot of people.

But Neyland Stadium is there all year.

Consider that even on game days, most of those people sit in Neyland Stadium for only about four hours. Neyland Stadium is actually sat in only about 24 hours a year.

Averaged out over the year, Neyland Stadium is used by only 75 people an hour. That’s significant.

But think about Market Square, on which we spent less than one-thirteenth the money. From when the Market Square Kitchen opens at 6:30 a.m. to when they have last call at MacLeod’s or Preservation Pub in the wee hours, Market Square is open for business to everybody about 20 hours a day. Even when businesses aren’t open, residents are sleeping there, or doing whatever people do at home at 4:00 in the morning.

I bet Market Square’s average hourly usage is greater than Neyland Stadium’s. Market Square has offices, residents, stores, restaurants. It hosts the Saturday farmer’s market and the Sundown concerts and the library’s movie series. It’s a stage for most of our public festivals, especially Dogwood Arts.

Still, many are appalled when we put into 150-year-old Market Square less than one-thirteenth the investment we’re putting into Neyland Stadium. To be fair, it probably comes down to the source of the money. With Market Square, it was mainly city taxes. Though UT is a taxpayer-funded school, and it’s hard to pry one project discreetly away from the rest of the university, most of the Neyland project will be funded separately, through donations and box-seat sales.

I’m not saying it’s absurd to spend massive amounts of money on Neyland Stadium. I have nothing against the stadium, or the improvement project. I’ve attended at least one game at Neyland every season since the Johnson administration. Though I have no complaints about the stadium as is, some of the improvements sound perfectly charming.

But let’s not feign appalled indignation at the “waste” of spending money in much-lesser quantities on things this city actually needs.

A new main library, for example. This broad community, which is willing to invest $108 million in sprucing up a football stadium, isn’t willing to invest a quarter of that amount in a whole new main public library which we’ve needed for 20 years.

To be cheap is one thing. Sometimes it’s admirable and necessary to be cheap, when money’s short. Faux-cheap is something I’m not sure how to deal with.

A reader called in recently remarking with some distaste on the recent trend by broadcasters to pronounce the football arena Nee-land Stadium. He grew up near the thing, he said, back when there were families in the neighborhood, and they always called it Nay-land Stadium.

I had to agree. I grew up calling it Nay-land Stadium, myself. Before 1980 or so, almost everyone called it that. To me, that Nay sounds better. And I say that as a guy whose last name starts with the syllable Nee, allowing few other options.

But I read in the daily some years ago that the Neyland family pronounces it Nee-land.

My grandfather knew Bob Neyland well. Papa, we called him, was director of the physical plant at the same time that Neyland was head coach and athletic director. They were close to the same age and size, a couple of beefy civil engineers with equal loves for military strategy and college football. They worked closely together building the original Field House, as my grandfather called it, though it was better known as Stokely Athletics Center. They also collaborated on some aspects of the stadium design, especially the upper decks.

My grandfather died over 20 years ago, but my dim memory is that he called the general Nee-land. I can’t be sure. My grandfather mumbled a good deal and, being from Middle Tennessee, pronounced a great many words in a way that struck young Knoxville ears as funny. We didn’t take his pronunciations of anything very seriously, and he didn’t impose them on us; he was never the kind of guy who corrected people unless he disapproved of the way we were backing out of his driveway.

I don’t doubt the family’s contention that the general pronounced his name Nee-land. If he had pronounced it like Marshal Ney, Napoleon’s strategist, it would be Nay-land. But it’s not necessarily French.

I did some research into that unusual word. There’s only one place in the world called Neyland, a small inlet town on the west coast of Wales. So maybe it’s Welsh. I learned that the Welsh pronounce it Nay-land.

Sometimes people just get their own names wrong, and maybe we’re obliged to correct them.

Wich encouragement, folks can start pronouncing their name differently. Vice President Dick Cheney apparently grew up pronouncing his last name, Chee-ney, and in fact pronounced it that way until he was in middle age. Now he answers to the more euphonious Chay-ney. There was an attempt in the TV media to correct the pronunciation when he first ran in 2000, but it seems to have evaporated. Now even the president calls him Chayney.

I’m no pronunciation Nazi. If you think Nay-land Stadium sounds better, I’ll back you up.

November 24, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 48 © 2004 Metro Pulse