NASCAR’s Bristol Motor Speedway ready for biggest college football crowd in history
With the transformation of Bristol Motor Speedway now complete, college football could be looking at a new single-game attendance record on Saturday night.
A sold-out crowd of 150,000 is expected to watch No. 17 Tennessee play Virginia Tech at the NASCAR track about 100 miles from the Volunteers’ campus.
Michigan Stadium holds the record for largest attendance at an NCAA football game, with 115,109 watching the Wolverines play Notre Dame in 2013.
“I really just don’t know what to expect,” Tennessee linebacker Darrin Kirkland Jr. said earlier this week. “It’s kind of hard to envision, but I’m definitely excited for the experience.”
The racetrack has hosted football before, when the Philadelphia Eagles played the Washington Redskins in a 1961 NFL exhibition game. But the venue was much smaller then, and the crowd totaled only about 10,000.
This weekend’s “Battle at Bristol” had been discussed repeatedly in the years since, with arrangements for the game finalized in 2013.
Workers have spent the past three weeks adding a football field and more than 5,000 seats to the track’s infield. Victory Lane and other areas have been transformed into team and referee locker rooms.
“I think when people see the field ... it will look and feel very natural,” said Jerry Caldwell, the track’s executive vice president.
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