Tennessee assistant athletic director for events management David Elliott said, "We're telling both teams to have a ton of binoculars up in the coaches' booth so they can see better there."īoth teams plan to visit the field for a walkthrough Friday. The seats and coaches' boxes are much farther away from the field here than at a typical football stadium. Rather than having video scoreboards at each end zone, Bristol has Colossus - a 700-ton overhead scoreboard with four high-resolution screens that is suspended above the infield. The common word they use is 'breathtaking' to walk in and see this place completely converted.
"It's been a lot of fun to take people in who haven't seen it. Technology was installed to allow instant replay and communication between coaches. The coaches' boxes and radio booths are where NASCAR officials generally monitor races. A tire mounting area now is Virginia Tech's locker room.
Three years earlier, the company needed nine days to install turf in StubHub Center in Los Angeles for the 2012 NFLPA Collegiate Bowl.Ī drivers' meeting room was reconfigured into a locker room for Tennessee. NRG Stadium, home of the Houston Texans, was converted from a grass surface to turf in four days in September 2015. Sydney Stahlbaum of AstroTurf noted the company was part of similarly rapid installations before. More than 100,000 square feet of AstroTurf were brought in to form the actual field, a process that was completed in about a week. The morning after the race, 450 truckloads of rock and manufactured sand evened out the speedway's bowl-shaped infield, which had a natural drop of about 3 feet from the edge to the middle. The speedway is hosting the football game less than three weeks after a Sprint Cup race. "I'm curious to see how the field will be and how far the stands and everything will be from the field," Virginia Tech receiver Isaiah Ford said. Saturday night's event will have an entirely different atmosphere and feel. This will be the speedway's first football game since the Washington Redskins and Philadelphia Eagles played a 1961 exhibition game here that drew 10,000 fans to a facility that seated 20,000.
According to the game contract, each school also may receive an additional $300,000 because the grandstand seats sold out. Tennessee and Virginia Tech are both guaranteed $4 million because each school sold over 40,000 tickets. Caldwell declined to disclose the costs of temporarily converting the speedway into a football stadium.