Now that we played Tenn in the Battle at Bristol and we are playing WVU this coming season at Fed Ex for The Black Diamond Trophy. What are your thoughts on having these games alternate every other year for VT. We get exposure to an SEC Team and a Big 12 Team (Just typing WVU as a Big 12 Team makes me laugh).
Other ideas could be to incorporate a game vs a Big 10 and make the rotation go to a three year rotation, we could play UMD, tOST or UM.
Thoughts:
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I'm all for playing home-home with UT, but I won't have anything to do with Bristol again.
yeah they can call that a neutral site all they want, but having gone to the game I can definitely say it was a UT home game with an allotment of VT seating. And I'm not just referring to the crowd percentages - the whole event felt biased towards UT. It was a cool experience once but I would never go again
Exactly. That's why it will never see my money again.
I would be very happy to have a few more home-home with tOSU. They are a quality team and it's a great matchup.
I would be fine with playing UTenn more, but Bristol has to be something like no more than once a decade I feel like.
I will not go to Bristol for another game again. The way they treated VT was as a second class citizen. Did not appreciate it. Will not give BMS $1 more of my money. EVER.
Second class citizen? Maybe I drank too much Bud at the track but I didn't think it was that bad. Other than the announcer being a complete homer, what was so bad? The paycheck was worth it for VT.
I don't think I would do it again anytime soon though.
I was drunk too, but I remember they made a big deal about UTs entrance and didn't do crap for us. The audio was down when our band played at halftime. The halftime entertainment was Lee Greenwood wearing UT gear. When they showed the trophy and talked about the game the footage showed everyone wearing orange. I didn't hear enter sandman. I hate UT so I'm biased but they heavily catered to the UT crowd.
They only way I would ever be in favor of playing the cousins again is if we had to get our trophy back.
If UT would agree to a home-home, that would be great. But I'm not interested in Bristol again.
I would sign WVU to a home-home-neutral after this one is over, but space it out over 6 years.
I'm married to a Vol. While playing them makes complete sense on many levels, It'd be easier for us if we didn't play each other.
Surprised how many of you seem so angry about Bristol. It wasn't as "neutral" as it probably should have been but I certainly didn't come away from it feeling so offended and like it was a bad experience.
I can't help but think the experience would be viewed differently by the majority if the on field result had been a win.
I disagree. The event was fun. Vols fans were generally good. Even got a tailgate offer at one of their home games next year. But it was a once in a lifetime event. There was way more choreography behind the scenes than one can consider imaginable. BMS pulled it off. ESPN pulled it off. If we won, we would be celebrating in the campers. But its hard to replicate. I'm not really upset at the UT home game status either. Crowd management was piss poor. Sightlines were terrible. Not to mention being stuck in the campground exit 4 hours just to leave after the game. And who charges $5 for water????
I just want to give UT a taste of Blacksburg.
I agree with all of this except...you do know VT charges $4 for water at Lane and Cassell, right? Yeah, $5 is BS, but we're not innocent of gouging when it comes to water either.
My bigger gripe was that water was impossible to find without waiting in line for an entire quarter. The beer guys should have been required to sell more water.
Their concessions in general were a nightmare.
They actually ran out of water, it wasn't the beer vendors' fault. They had to go buy another semi trailer full of it, and were bringing it into the stadium on pallets in the 2nd quarter and selling it in the middle of the concourse.
That's still on them. They failed to realize they were hosting a football game and not a race where patrons are allowed to bring coolers.
I waited in 3 lines before giving up and finding a track staffer, and each of the three vendors said the same story that they have an "allotment" of water and soda given to them by the track. They only bring their own specialty products, and the common products at all stands are provided by the track.
When I said "on them" I meant the track. Even if the vendors brought less than they should have and it wasn't provided by the track, the track is ultimately responsible.
I imagine a lot of teams have felt the same playing VT in a "neutral" FedEx Field. The primary difference being that we didn't win any of those games.
2 of those games were against teams from other time zones. And the third was a Cinci home game that Dan Snyder bought.
I prefer our current home and homes with the upper echelon of the B1G to alternating between these two teams. I think it might be good to strike up an OOC rivalry with UT, but I'm not as excited about the same prospect with WVU (I've been to Mountaineer stadium, and its....Not Good). A set of home and homes with the SEC East would be good as well.
Who in the SEC plays home and homes with non in state rivals?
Maybe Vandy and Wake? Probably more academic than athletic rivals, but that fits, too. Hard to develop out if state and conference rivals. But, yeah - I get your point.
Gotcha. I'm just expressing what I would *want* to happen, not necessarily what can. Home&Home with UGA and Florida would be great: understand it's not likely to happen.
Other than the tailgating, concerts, and saying "I was there", no thanks. The viewing of the game was better when looking at the JumboTron - so essentially it was a $1000 weekend to watch it on TV. Cool idea at first sure, but in practicality, it was a giant TV viewing party
Glad I was there but no more Bristol for me. Something you had to do once. WVU can pound sand.
Is there an option regarding Bristol and FedEx (WVU in general) that says "fuck that shit"?
I wouldn't mind playing UT in the Chick-Fil-A at the Georgia Dome. Last time that happened Tyrod put a whooping on them!
Absolutely curbstomped dat azz!
I'm in favor of rotating top P5 opponents. I'm more than okay with having a home and away against UT or OSU once a decade. The only real change I'd like is less ECU.
Slightly off subject, but I wish Annapolis was a bigger stadium. That bowl game was a blast!
Whatever we do, please stop playing at the toilet known as Fedex and giving money to Dan Snyder. That stadium experience is as bad as it gets.
As many have pointed out, BMS was a once in a lifetime experience. It took years of planning to pull that game off, and it would likely be a logistical nightmare to do it regularly. I always thought the idea was way cooler than the actual experience, and it seems many comments here confirm that. At the end of the day, it was a football game at a race track. It was a great thing to be able to say you were there, but many probably wouldn't pay to do it again.
A home and home with UT would be great. You could even keep the trophy in play considering Bristol is split between the two states. I also really enjoyed our series with OSU and would like to do that again. Other than the trophy and the history we have with WVU, I'm not super thrilled about that becoming a regular game again. But, horror stories aside, they are a P5 rival and would be a nice addition to our schedule. I would definitely take playing WVU every year over ECU.
My response is in haiku:
No No No No No
Tennessee can come to Lane
'neers can stay in Hell
Poetry, man...pure poetry.
Neither, although I'd be more willing to play WVU every year because they're actually a rival (as a West Virginian, it is a rivalry). On future schedules we have Penn State, Michigan, Wisconsin (wouldn't be surprised if that got pushed into the next century), and even Arizona way down the line. Given that we have to play ECU basically until the end of time, and ODU falling under the same category, I don't want anymore regular non-conference games. I like our future P5 matchups, and I'm hoping we play schools from the SEC and Big 12 as well in addition to the Big 10.
Bristol was a logistical nightmare. Their concessions were a mess (they ran out of water in the 2nd quarter, and talking to a track staff member revealed that they actually bought another full-size trailer load of water, and I watched as they brought in pallets by forklift and dropped them in the middle of the concourse and were selling them right there), they had no idea how to handle the parking situation and the fact that many of the 160,000 people were ready to leave immediately at the end of the event instead of either camping out overnight after a night race or tailgating more after an afternoon race, and the viewing experience was just horrendous.
I will never return to Bristol for a football game. Let them stick to what they do best.
Let me get this out of the way. I had a great time at the Bristol weekend, and the whole thing was an event well worth the price paid.
That being said, they were not at all prepared for the crowd they got. From the hour it took to get from the lines outside the venue through security to the fact the stadium ran out of water in the first quarter after 13 hours of tailgating in the hot sun, it was very clear in our ares that they were just not ready for a collegiate crowd. And if you're going to sell something as a neutral site venue, then be professional and act like a neutral site. It was noticeable that every BMS official they showed on the screen was wearing Tennessee gear, and it was noticeable the PA was slanted towards Tennessee. Is that necessarily a big deal, not really, but when you're paying $80-$150 a ticket for a neutral site venue, it rubs one the wrong way when the opponent gets all the attention.
That said, these issues should be easily remedied, and if they are I think it would be a great opportunity for our program to make it a permanent part of our future schedules. The VT-Tennessee rivalry is something that could become huge in the college football landscape, and I would propose a hybrid annual home and home with them as follows:
Year 1 - Knoxville
Year 2 - Blacksburg
Year 3 - Knoxville
Year 4 - Bristol
Year 5 - Blacksburg
Year 6 - Knoxville
Year 7 - Blacksburg
Year 8 - Bristol
This would be a great opportunity for both VT and Tennessee to have an annual matchup that we can sell to recruits with at least 1 game in Bristol that every incoming class can participate in. And that game in Bristol has enough space between games where it allows it to continue feeling like a special event whenever we have it.
I forgot about the lines for waiting to enter the stadium, they were pretty bad too. Just add it to the list of reasons I was not impressed.
I was afraid that there was going to be a riot at my gate. Eventually they just said screw it and threw the security out of the window. It was like they never handled a big crowd before. Again I would not do it again.
They hadn't dealt with a crowd that behaved like that before. And what I mean by that is, a capacity race crowd trickles in throughout the morning or the afternoon if it's a night race. There is all kinds of activity in the pits and events on the front and back stretches. They give away all kinds of pit passes, most of which have an expiration time before the race, so people are down there taking advantage of that.
I think they tried to do the same thing with the pre race concerts but that attendance must have been lackluster because an 1 to 2 hours before kickoff, everybody packed up the tailgates and headed towards the track and the heightened security caused bottlenecks that almost caused stampedes.
That's part of what I can't wrap my head around. Did they seriously not realize the logistics of a football game are not the same as the logistics of a race?
I think it was one of those minor details that just didn't warrant much thought, because at one point in time, Bristol Motor Speedway was handling capacity crowds twice a year. So it wasn't anything new for them, so they thought. And with the string of terrorist attacks that happened months before the big game, everyone's main focus was security.
It was a minor detail with major implications. Sure, they may have had capacity crowds at races before, but like you said they trickle in over time. Football crowds tailgate up until right before kickoff and then all head in around the same time. It wound up having security implications as well, as many gates gave up on security measures to get the crowd in faster. It was foolish if they believed football crowd = race crowd.
I agree completely. The devil is always in the details and you have to sweat the small stuff when undertaking something that big.
Tennessee is on another slow dive into the crapper. We can play better teams. So they're 4 hours away and play in the SEC? Vanderbilt is a little further away and also plays in the SEC. Vandy would probably be a better match up and could be another school full of snotty rich kids we could beat the snot out of in preparation for the regular season closer.
TL;DR Tennessee is about to suck for a long time. Again. Let's play somebody else.
Counterpoint: any win over the SEC looks good for the resume, especially wins over the name programs, regardless of how shitty those programs are at the current time. I can't see a day and time where an annual win over Tennessee isn't good for recruiting and playoff positioning.
That's a legit counterpoint.
Countercounterpoint: Tennessee football can go straight to hell.
That's a pretty good countercounterpoint, and one I can't argue with
Countercountercounterpoint: I would very much like to be one of the main reasons they're stuck in perpetual football purgatory.
I can get very very behind this point.
Also, HokieGirl's sanity. I've never even met her, and I feel like we owe her one.
Also also: maybe we can get Mook's dad drunk again. That was amazing.
^No one can argue that. An inebriated jreynolds06 is a TKP treasure.
I would agree. The nation just doesn't know it yet.
It would say it was actually a UT home game that just happened to be moved to Bristol. The game was administered like a UT home game with a few exceptions.
also, never going there again for another football game, and I think most fans would be with me on that. As a one-time spectacle it was great, but as a football venue it was pretty much terrible.
What made the event so great was the sheer size and excitement of it as well as the sold out stands. I don't think that level could be maintained having Bristol happen that often and I don't think BMS would be willing to deal with the logistics either. I could see if keeping its luster if it happens no more than once a decade though.