When the Tennessee Volunteers step onto the football field to take on the Virginia Tech Hokies on Sept. 10, 2016, there will likely be about 47,500 more fans on hand than the Vols are used to playing in front of at their enormous home field, Neyland Stadium.
That's because the teams will be meeting at the Bristol Motor Speedway, which is just 115 miles from Tennessee's campus in Knoxville. The first college game played where NASCAR cars normally roam — billed the "Battle in Bristol" — is expected to attract about 150,000 fans.
That's going to be an awful lot of orange.
Games at unusual venues for big-time college basketball, football and hockey are starting to pop up on a regular basis. From baseball stadiums to aircraft carriers, the backdrops for games have gotten more interesting and creative over the years.
College football has started playing games in Major League Baseball stadiums on an annual basis, with two bowl games set in parks normally reserved for the crack of the bat. The Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl is held at San Francisco's AT&T Park, while the New Era Pinstripe Bowl is held at New York's Yankee Stadium.
This coming season, a bowl game at Thomas Robinson Stadium in the Bahamas has been added. The track and field and soccer stadium in Nassau will host the Bahamas Bowl, while Marlins Park in Miami, another MLB stadium, will serve as home to the Miami Beach Bowl.
There have also been regular-season college football games at unusual venues. Northwestern played Illinois at Wrigley Field in Chicago in 2010. Both teams had to drive for the same end zone because there was not enough room to safely drive into one of them, but seeing a college football game played in that historic venue was still cool.
Central Florida will play Penn State on Aug. 30 at Croke Park, a soccer venue in Dublin, Ireland. It will be the fifth college football game played in Dublin since 1988. Games have also been held at Aviva Stadium and Landsdowne Road prior to this year's "Croke Park Classic."
College basketball tried its hand at interesting venues with four games played aboard aircraft carriers in 2011 and 2012. But unpredictable weather and condensation on the courts pretty much brought that trend to a halt — even though the short-lived trend produced some spectacular scenes and images.
Wikipedia The University of Michigan hosted Michigan State University and set a world record for attendance at a hockey game with 104,173 fans in 2010.
College hockey games in outdoor stadiums, however, appear to be here to stay. In fact, those games have also become annual events, with men's and women's games all over the Northeast in venues like East Lansing's Spartan Stadium, Green Bay's Lambeau Field, Wrigley Field, Boston's Fenway Park, Ann Arbor's Michigan Stadium and more.
College sports typically produce amazing atmospheres in the normal venues, but getting to see an occasional game in one of these places adds some intrigue and fun to the whole experience.
