Even with a pleasant mountain breeze swirling through the foothills of the Smokies, Zack Roskop had to close his doors and windows once 3:30 struck. The game of the millennium was in town.
In a brief, clairvoyant moment, Roskop turned to his bartenders with a message of caution— “Buckle up; in about 45 minutes it’s gonna just be mass chaos”—before ringing the last call bell to declare that the next round was on the house. The urbanism of Neyland Stadium is largely unrivaled in U.S. sports—a nation of once-concrete, now chic venues encircled by moats of asphalt—finding much of its stiffest competition right at home in the Southeastern Conference and around the college football landscape.
Most SEC stadiums trace their lineage back to the earliest eras of U.S. sport—only Kentucky’s Kroger Field was constructed after 1940. These were periods when these aforementioned urbanist traits were nonnegotiables for stadium design and city life more generally. Stadiums needed to be accessible by foot or by public transport and quickly became extensions of their surrounding neighborhoods, best exemplified by the iconic jewel box ballparks that once dotted the downtowns of major U.S. cities.
“For SEC games you’re parking on a far side of campus and you’re not necessarily unhappy about that,” Kellison says. “You probably have strong bonds, not just to the stadium or the team, but also to the infrastructure, buildings, quads or the ovals that you can either retrace your steps on or introduce to your kids or grandkids.”Jake Crandall/USA TODAY Network
Despite the almost religious role these stadiums play on SEC campuses, they’re guaranteed to be in use on only six to seven Saturdays out of the year. For football, it becomes particularly important to find alternate uses for the venue, or to “activate the space,” as Mark Rosentraub, professor of Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, puts it.
“The great thing about university campuses is that they come with lots of opportunities for other uses,” Chapin says. “So they’re activating [the space] in a way that professional sports teams only wish they could.”
declanaw Also a shining example of giving a free education to people with questionable backgrounds based off athletic ability only later to kill someone.
declanaw Great piece!
si_ncaafb declanaw Urban Meyer?
si_ncaafb declanaw Wait - you mean build stadiums ON campus? What a thought... Y'all should visit Camp Randall sometime..or Kinnich or Ross-Ade or The Big House or the Horseshoe or....
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