📍 Knoxville, Tennessee
🏈 Home of Tennessee Volunteers football

The mighty SEC is full of cavernous venues that stand quietly on their respective campuses for most of the year until, on a few fall weekends, they come alive with spirit and strength as thousands cheer on their beloved football team. In this religiously passionate conference, a few schools produce experiences that truly stand out above the rest. Auburn. LSU. Alabama. But it is Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium that can cultivate an atmosphere like no other.

Built in 1921, the then-humble stadium on future Phillip Fulmer Way was originally known as Shields-Watkins Field. That name transferred exclusively to the playing surface when the venue was christened Neyland Stadium in 1962 to honor the legacy of Robert Neyland, a former UT coach that helped propel the program into the national spotlight.

Over the years, new pieces of the stadium have been erected, melding together into the cohesive structure that it is today. Since its inception, expansion, upgrades and enhancements have occurred regularly, often improving the gameday flow and influencing the ever-changing capacity. Today, Neyland can hold more than 101,000 fans, making it the sixth-largest stadium in the US and the eighth-largest in the world.

Thanks in part to its enormity, Neyland has often been ranked by various outlets as having the best college football gameday experience in the nation. Whether it’s Georgia or Gardner-Webb, Vols fans will pack even the highest of the bleachers and bring the noise to good ole Rocky Top.

The school’s many unique and electric theme games are also a primary driver of ambience. From sights like the iconic – and originally fan-driven – Checker Neyland and lights-out all-black Dark Mode, to chords of “spooky” Rocky Top around Halloween, anything and everything can occur throughout any given season.

Knoxville, although a booming little metropolis, is often a quiet city – but that all changes the moment those boys in orange and white run through the Power T and take the field at Neyland Stadium. The crowd roars and never softens, cheering the Vols to victory just like they have more than 500 times on Rocky Top – the highest home win total in college football.

Having taken to the gridiron since 1891, Tennessee has had plenty of time to build an impressive resume – and built it they have. In the regular season, the Vols have won more than 65% of all of their games. They’ve appeared also in nearly 60 postseason bowl games, coming out on top in more than half of them. The Vols also lay claim to six National Championship titles, the most recent coming in 1998, and secured six division titles from 1997 to 2007.

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From the days of Neyland’s namesake to the Peyton Manning years, Tennessee fans have long captured the spirit of college football and been the essence of the sport. As the Vols dance their way into the checkerboard end zones here along the Tennessee River, the palpable excitement courses through the seats at Neyland Stadium and even across the airwaves to your television set, making you wish that you were on ol’ Rocky Top, down in the Tennessee hills.