Until recently the largest crowd to ever attend a college football game was 115,108 and this was set at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2013. This attendance record at an actual footballs stadium is difficult to surpass considering most football stadiums don’t hold this many people and at some colleges they might not even be able to hold half this number. If a game was to be billed as one that would have an even larger attendance number, how could it possibly become the record breaker unless new stadium facilities were built for one school?
Actually, there is a way this feat can be accomplished and a venue used that many might not have thought of. What can happen is find a stadium or venue that will hold more people. While there are few locations that house more people than the University of Michigan stadium the folks from the University of Tennessee and Virginia Tech came up with a solution to be able to play a game on September 10th of this year and see if they could actually break the record for attendance. Located between these two schools is the Bristol Motor Speedway, which offers a unique venue for such an event.
Most race tracks are too large for an event of this nature and only a portion of the track infield could be used, but Bristol is unique. By racing standards its small and every bit of the track can be seen from some seats. The track itself is only half a mile long and is surrounded by seating on all sides. The infield is small enough to be a great place for a football field to be laid out and the seating offers over 150,000 places for folks to sit and enjoy the game. Since this location is idea, the two schools agreed to the venue and the date was set.
As you can see from the video below the construction of a full football field was a lot of work which not only involved creating the field with goalposts and lines but also involved raising up a 700-ton custom made video board for the game. This video board was called Colossus and made it so every person in attendance could see the action much easier since they were farther from the field than normal. This video board also included a 540,000 watt audio system.
As the goal was to have the highest attendance in college football history this game was billed as the Battle at Bristol and showed two rivals that share a border between the two states. The only question to still be answered is whether or not this event was an attendance success. There was an official Guinness Book of World Records team of auditors at the game to take attendance which reached 156,990 for the game, making this the most attended game in college football history. Check out this video to see and learn more about this field transformation that took place to create this venue for the game.
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