I'm gonna take a break from the weeping & gnashing of teeth, and let y'all know I and my crew had a great time in Knoxville. The folks were very friendly and courteous at the game. All complimented on their experience at Kyle Field.
OK - gnash on.

Loved it!

Their entrance is much more unique and energetic than ours. Band plays the whole time, no big DJ- beat drop.

Campus is gorgeous. Ladies are gorgeous. Knoxville is an interesting city (didn't get a lot of time to explore).

Highly recommended.

Sounds like they were nothing but nice to you. What a great experience.

Pre-game atmosphere was fun. The.only thing I didn't like during the game was the booing for every injured player because obviously we were just trying to "slow them down"

When the cart came out in the 4th quarter, I heard a guy a couple of rows behind me say "I guess it's OK, this one might actually.be hurt"

That's good to hear... for whatever reason I picked up the impression that the vols were more like tech or lsu...

Guess you can't always believe what you hear

Outside the stadium was great. We tailgated on a houseboat on the Tennessee river. Fans were nice. However inside the stadium is a completely different story. It's an absolute s***hole! The bathrooms have not been updated in at least 60 years. The upper deck concourse is so narrow it's dangerous. A lack of handrails with very steep steps is dangerous. I've been to just about every SEC venue now and Kyle Field is far and away the best stadium in the conference.

I will second this, no $18 chicken wraps available.

Most of their fans were really great. Their frat guys and the obvious hillbillies were beyond obnoxious, but that's true of every other SEC team I've encountered except for Auburn. Heard over and over again that we were the nicest fans they've met, and while I appreciate that, I hear that every single time another team beats our disappointing squad.

Neyland is a great environment, but the interior workings of that place need a face-lift in the worst way. Getting in is an absolute joke. Concourses are dark, way too small, and they need waaay more restrooms and areas that sell beer. Definitely one of the loudest venues, but it made me appreciate how much nicer Kyle is in virtually every way.

Definitely had a great time! Plus, if you have time to visit the Smokies, that alone is worth the trip.

chick79 said:

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Outside the stadium was great. We tailgated on a houseboat on the Tennessee river. Fans were nice. However inside the stadium is a completely different story. It's an absolute s***hole! The bathrooms have not been updated in at least 60 years. The upper deck concourse is so narrow it's dangerous. A lack of handrails with very steep steps is dangerous. I've been to just about every SEC venue now and Kyle Field is far and away the best stadium in the conference.

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Tailgating on a houseboat sounds bad ass!

Fans were nice ( easy to be nice when you win ) . Only one drunk frat boy who said " I hate f***ing Texas " to my wife. She responded " So do we , you're playing Texas A&M "
Stadium infrastructure is horrible. You need to be part billy goat to get to the upper level seats. Enjoyed the piss troughs ( flashback to Old Kyle ). Concourses are the size of an American Eagle plane's aisle. Pretty campus, generally friendly. The Market Square area is pretty cool. Nashville is a blast, Broadway bars are a lotta fun . I'll go back there to whip up on Vandy, getting tired of being disappointed almost everywhere else.

Enjoyed Knoxville but the stadium was awful

Other than that, how was the play Mrs Lincoln?

Had a great time. Only had one dbag fan who was sitting behind us at the game. All other fans were incredibly welcoming.

I have a late flight, so going to walk around campus for a bit this afternoon.

GigEm_AValk said:

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they need waaay more restrooms and areas that sell beer. Definitely one of the loudest venues, .

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If they need more bathrooms selling beer probably a bad idea
Also I don't think having the option to buy a beer adds to college football experience enough to compensate for the increase in drunken dou*** bag behavior

Aginnebraska said:

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Other than that, how was the play Mrs Lincoln?

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So...Jackie... would you like to have a drink on my yacht?

GREAT!!!

Their stadium is cool but the construction made it a little difficult to maneuver. We sail-gated with the Vol Navy and had a blast. Campus is beautiful and every UT fan we were around was great, with just one exception. One drunk d-bag out of the whole bunch wasn't going to ruin everything for us. Other than our incompetent head coach, I've got no complaints about the trip. We had a great time and about to head to the airport to get back to Texas.

Charlie Moran said:

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Fans were nice ( easy to be nice when you win ) . Only one drunk frat boy who said " I hate f***ing Texas " to my wife. She responded " So do we , you're playing Texas A&M "
Stadium infrastructure is horrible. You need to be part billy goat to get to the upper level seats. Enjoyed the piss troughs ( flashback to Old Kyle ). Concourses are the size of an American Eagle plane's aisle. Pretty campus, generally friendly. The Market Square area is pretty cool. Nashville is a blast, Broadway bars are a lotta fun . I'll go back there to whip up on Vandy, getting tired of being disappointed almost everywhere else.

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What a great line! Wish I had thought of it when I received same comment from numbers of drunk South Carolina students last season. I was so dumbfounded at the language I couldn't even respond. That won't happen again.

Aginnebraska said:

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Other than that, how was the play Mrs Lincoln?

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Well, since this particular production has been playing continuously in multiple venues by a constant rotation of actors for my 40 years, I know by memory all the sight gags, slapstick, one-liners along with the dashing of emotional hope that the tragedy can be somehow avoided at the end.
Thus, I go for the event and to people watch, fully aware of the inevitable when the curtain comes down.

We had a blast. Enjoyed a nice tailgate with Vol fans, got a tour of the campus. The Vol Navy is pretty cool. They definitely have a unique setup that I enjoyed. The stadium is really old and outdated, but not much they can do to update it given the location. It was loud and intense at times, but Kyle field is louder. They do a real classy entrance, even play the opposing team fight song before the game. Unfortunately they ruined their "classy" attitude when they booed our injured players. Overall, I'd recommend to come back! Now my flight is delayed getting back to Houston....ugh.

I put them next to SCar and Tech as far as number of drunk redneck yokels that try to start fights. Stadium is trash as mentioned, whatever they're updating it like we did. Cool college gameday stuff and city.

I am glad that for the most part some good experiences were had.

There is a multi million dollar upgrade going on in phases in the stadium and it will take a few years to get all of the stadium completed but the bathrooms are at the top of the list, they just started on the high dollar home side of the stadium.

As far as the booing injured players, we have had quite a few floppers in the last few years and that is wha's being booed. Nolan did get applause when he was put on the cart. It gets old when you see defensive players get up and look at the sidelines and then fall down to slow down the pace.

So with that being said I'm totally on board with you on the drinking and frat boys.

GigEm_AValk said:

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Most of their fans were really great. Their frat guys and the obvious hillbillies were beyond obnoxious, but that's true of every other SEC team I've encountered except for Auburn. Heard over and over again that we were the nicest fans they've met, and while I appreciate that, I hear that every single time another team beats our disappointing squad.

Neyland is a great environment, but the interior workings of that place need a face-lift in the worst way. Getting in is an absolute joke. Concourses are dark, way too small, and they need waaay more restrooms and areas that sell beer. Definitely one of the loudest venues, but it made me appreciate how much nicer Kyle is in virtually every way.

Definitely had a great time! Plus, if you have time to visit the Smokies, that alone is worth the trip.

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It's like a&m built a completely new stadium in the last decade or something. Insanely good timing with inflation now.

SEC-UT said:

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I am glad that for the most part some good experiences were had.

There is a multi million dollar upgrade going on in phases in the stadium and it will take a few years to get all of the stadium completed but the bathrooms are at the top of the list, they just started on the high dollar home side of the stadium.

As far as the booing injured players, we have had quite a few floppers in the last few years and that is wha's being booed. Nolan did get applause when he was put on the cart. It gets old when you see defensive players get up and look at the sidelines and then fall down to slow down the pace.

So with that being said I'm totally on board with you on the drinking and frat boys.

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The hilarious part is that your offense is not fast. No one is slowing you down.

Yep ! Several years ago I was working a consulting job at Oak Ridge, and I stayed in Knoxville for about 6 months. Loved it there! Also, they had some really nice restaurants.

Mostly nice, friendly folks.

Except for the drunk tenessee fan that somehow ended up in the middle of all the Ags and fell on my wife and 6 year old. His wife, wearing tennessee stuff, kept doing horns down. I don't think she even knew which team tenessee was playing.

Knoxville feels a lot larger than it's population. I was a bit surprised at how urban the campus was. I hadn't looked and didn't realize that it's at the edge of downtown. I expected it to be more like our setting than tu's. It has its own city going on outside of the University. Much more vertical than I expected.

Nearly everyone was very nice with the worse exception being two guys with their girls in between, on the upper level. It looked like they made a pact to stand the whole game just to annoy the Aggies behind them. It worked especially well for one old Ag that I was a bit surprised to see made it up that high. They were too low to bother me, but I wish our offense would have bothered them more. Otherwise the only words I saw exchanged were orange-on-orange.

The area is amazing. The hills are a nice change. Fall colors in SMNP. Caught some nice cars and bikes on Tail of the Dragon. Stadium is surprisingly outdated. Very narrow spots and slow moving. Fireworks off the top once it got dark was cool, but I wish they were leaving defeated.

Sailgating is unique and a ton of fun, but their "Grove" is the parking garage immediately next to the campus. I've never seen so much going on inside a garage and especially on the top. They even had a big row of portos up top. They get loaded up and pile in. I think that's why the games themselves are the worst part of the people experience.

Great trip. Now bring on Kentucky so I can stop traveling to losses.

First time posting on here...just wanted to come on and say what an awesome turn out you guys had in Knoxville over the weekend. There were a ton of Aggies there, and every one of them that I met were super nice (both before and after the game). I will add that it is one of the few times an opponent has had enough fans in Neyland Stadium to make much noise when Tennessee has the ball.

Hope everyone heals up during your bye week, and I'll be pulling for you to run the table the rest of the season.