Speeding up College Football: Tennessee to Play Virginia Tech on a NASCAR Track

October 17, 2013 by Dave Congrove

They say that the top two American sports are NFL football and NASCAR. So it should come as no surprise that college football is trying to capitalize on the popularity of those two by combining pigskin and racing.

Tennessee and Virginia Tech are moving from the field to the track to play a football game at Bristol Motor speedway. The matchup is being called the Battle of Bristol and it’s on tap for September 10th, 2016. For those who love to bet on college football at SportsBettingOnline.ag the excitement can’t come soon enough.

The track is about halfway between both schools, so we should see an equal number of fans representing both squads. The game will likely set some impressive records. The NCAA attendance record was set in August at Michigan Stadium when Michigan and Notre Dame went helmet-to-helmet in font of 115,109 fans. Back in the 1920s, there was a game played at Soldier Field in Chicago in front of around 120,000 fans, but records weren’t kept back then.

The Bristol Speedway can accommodate 160,000 fans, so barring a ridiculous attendance record between now and 2016, this matchup will likely set a league record that will take years to break.

This game could very well change the landscape of college football, with television deals and sponsorships likely making this one of the most anticipated sporting events in college football history.

And speaking of TV, the speedway will have to remove a massive video board that sits in the middle of what would be the field and add screens elsewhere. And they’ll need to do all this in a very short window. There’s a race schedule for August 2016 and no modifications can be made leading up to it.

That means officials will have just a few weeks to get the racetrack football ready. We’re already ready to watch, so we can’t wait.