RACE TRACK TO FIELD
Tennessee players to try out Bristol set-up today
KNOXVILLE — Tennessee’s football team will get its first glimpse of the set-up at Bristol Motor Speedway today when the Volunteers have their walkthrough there a little more than 24 hours before Saturday’s night game against Virginia Tech.
Nothing about the “Battle at Bristol” will be normal, including the walk-through.
While Tennessee sent its coaching staff to assess the sight lines and vantage points at the track in July and other support staffers and administrators have made multiple trips there this year to work out all the logistics, today’s stop will provide the Vols their first true view of they scene awaiting them.
“Normally when we do a walkthrough, we do all of our work here, and then when we go to the opponent’s stadium, it’s more to get acclimated to the field, the locker rooms,” Tennessee coach Butch Jones said Wednesday.
“There’s a lot we have to get accomplished going there on Friday. I think first and foremost it’s getting a great feel for the turf, looking at the surroundings, getting comfortable, the locker room, our sideline, our sight lines — all that.
“It’ll be a pretty extensive walkthrough when we get to Bristol come Friday.”
College football’s first game at a NASCAR track will break the sport’s attendance record, but it also comes with many unknowns for the players and coaches.
Construction of the field concluded last week, and the midfield and 25-yard-line logos and end zones were painted this week. The building normally housing drivers’ meetings for races will be Tennessee’s locker room at one end of the infield. At the other
end will be Virginia Tech’s locker room, normally where tires are stored for NASCAR events.
The sheer size of the 150,000-seat track will require an adjustment in depth perception for the players, particularly the kickers and punters, akin to basketball players having to acclimate themselves to playing in cavernous football arenas.
Tennessee’s coordinators plan to call the game from the de facto coaching booth along one of the straightaways, and both Mike DeBord and Bob Shoop believe being farther from the field won’t be an issue.
“From the side it’s fine,” Shoop said. “If I were sitting in the end zone I wouldn’t want an end-zone seat. If the ball were on the side you’d have that big, giant scoreboard in your way.
“Our researchers told us we’re going to be fine and not have any problems. We’re behind (Virginia Tech’s) bench, so we should be able to see personnel substitutions and things along those lines pretty well.”
Jones said the coordinators are prepared to relocate and call the game from the sideline if necessary.
“I don’t anticipate that,” he said. “Obviously there is sudden change, and if there is a sudden change and the sight lines become an issue, they are prepared to come down to call the game. Right now everything is about a rhythm and a routine, so I don’t see them being on the sidelines.
“We have gone there, preliminarily, before the field was down. It looked like we wouldn’t have any issues with the sight lines, so I don’t anticipate that, but we always have contingency plans in place. If there is, they’ll be prepared to come down.”
The game is expected to draw around 160,000 fans, and there will be thousands more in the surrounding vicinity hoping to enjoy the weekend, including the Kenny Chesney concert at the track on Friday night, while not attending the game.
Lori Worley, the communications director for the Bristol Chamber of Commerce, this week told the Knoxville News Sentinel the game is expected to have an economic impact of $126 million on the Tri-Cities area.
Bristol officials long have said the game is essentially sold out, but plenty should be available on the secondary market for outside the track leading up to kickoff. On StubHub ticket prices ranged from $565 for the “Battlefield” seats in the infield behind the end zones to $143 for a grandstand seat in the corner. Those prices were as of Thursday afternoon.
The Vols of course won’t be focused on the crowd or the novelty of playing a football game at a race track.
“I’ve never been there, but I know it’s going to be a lot of people,” linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin said. “It’s going to be a little bit different. We’ve got to try to tune that out as much as we can and focus on the 100 yards of green that’s going to be out there.
“That’s all that we can really control. We can’t control the crowd noise or how many people there or what’s going on on the outside. We’ve just got to focus on us and focus on Virginia Tech and playing the game.”
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfree press.com