For about seven Saturdays every fall, it is “football time in Tennessee” inside Neyland Stadium, as tens of thousands of fans gather to cheer on the Vols.
However, for five days every week, it is also academic learning and administrative time inside the cavernous and historic structure on the University of Tennessee campus.
Seemingly unknown to many patrons of UT other than a few students, faculty and staff who frequent the structure, the old East and South stadium wings have also doubled in recent years as scholastic facilities for anthropology, speech and hearing, and engineering, among other departments.
“It does inspire some quizzical looks when we say an academic department is housed in the bowels of a football stadium,” said UT Department of Anthropology head Andrew Kramer with a laugh recently.
“But it’s an easy reference point as far as telling people where to come.”
The rare combination of scholars, football players and fans under one roof came about more than four decades ago, when the space at Neyland became available at a time when several academic departments, such as anthropology, were in need of more room.
UT had announced plans in 1970 to close the South hall dormitory in the stadium and operate the adjacent East dorm, where football players once lived, as a cooperative style hall, with room and board combined in the payment plan. By then, the newer men’s athletic dorm, Gibbs Hall, had been opened for about eight years.
However, due to a lack of interest among students, the cooperative idea for East Hall did not materialize, although some stadium dorm space was used temporarily until the Apartment Residence Hall in Presidential Court was completed.
South stadium hall was converted to academic uses beginning in 1971, with the anthropology department being one of the first tenants after moving from its cramped space in McClung Museum.
The head of the department beginning that year was none other than Dr. William Bass III, who in 1992 would become director of the school’s Forensic Anthropology Center.
While the renowned “Body Farm” he helped start is away from the stadium near UT Medical Center, football team doctors on fall Saturdays are still not the only ones examining bones inside the stadium.
The anthropology department also uses rooms in its South Stadium Hall facility for skeletal study. Spotted examining some bones recently in a small room down the curved hall from where an anthropology class was taking place was UT undergraduate student Kimberly Dewine.
She also pondered the uniqueness of having an academic hall inside the football stadium and said she thinks it is “cool.” In fact, she admittedly brags to fellow students about where she has class.
“They think I’m nerdy because, when I go to football games, I talk about it being where my classes are,” she said. “But they are just interested in football.”
The fact that bones are used for anthropological study in Neyland Stadium has created some urban legends. In the popular 2009 movie, “The Blind Side,” for example, a tutor and Ole Miss alum played by Kathy Bates told football star Michael Oher that he did not want to go to Tennessee because the FBI reportedly buried the body parts of unidentified dead people under UT’s Neyland Stadium.
Dr. Kramer laughed about such comments, knowing that comes with having an anthropology department in a stadium.
“It is a strange place to be housed, but in some respects it is well known we are here,” he said.
The anthropology department is currently on the second floor of the South hall building of the stadium and is entered through the southwest corner. According to signage, the third floor is used for offices for graduate student instructors of foreign languages and possibly other departments, and the fourth floor is used by the Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology.
Just north of the speech offices is the small VolCard student and staff identification card office.
The East Hall part of the stadium – which connects with South Hall through easily accessible hallways – has been used recently by the College of Engineering.
All the South and East hall offices are reached during the week without having to go through locked gates, which is not the case with the North and recently remodeled West stands.
However, a different situation exists on game day Saturdays. While the anthropology instructors and other faculty used to be able to go to their offices on a home game weekend if they wanted – and could find nearby parking – all that changed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Kramer said. For security purposes, the anthropology offices and other academic facilities inside the stadium are now locked and off limits from Friday evening until Sunday on home game weekends, he added.
While having classroom and academic office space inside a football stadium creates somewhat of a unique situation, this was also the case when dorms for athletes and other students were under the seats.
According to UT associate vice chancellor emeritus and campus historian Betsey Creekmore, the original UT stadium dorm project was inspired by Louisiana State University’s Tiger Stadium.
In 1936, about two years before the UT project was begun, Louisiana Gov. Huey Long decided to put dorm space in the LSU stadium as a way to get around the fact that state funds had been allocated for dormitories but not for stadium expansion. Besides gaining the attention of Louisiana state legislators, the LSU plan apparently also caught the eyes of Tennessee officials.
“Professor Nathan Dougherty had visited the campus at LSU and had convinced the university that placing dormitory rooms under the stands was an inexpensive and effective way to add dormitory space,” said Ms. Creekmore.
Of course, the University of Chattanooga also used its stadium grandstands – the Oak Street stands, built in the late 1920s, and the Vine Street stands, constructed in the late 1940s -- for dorms as well.
With the help of Works Progress Administration funding, UT in 1938 began constructing some dorm space under an enlarged east stadium grandstand. When the project was completed in 1939, it provided housing for about 128 male athletes and regular students. A popular draw was its large reception room/lounge, which featured “a record-playing machine,” Ms. Creekmore said.
Neyland Stadium, which was originally called Shields-Watkins Field, had opened in 1921 with a small grandstand seating 3,200 fans on the west side.
And prior to the East hall construction, an armory and ROTC facility was built under a now-razed Section X of the stadium on the north end.
In 1948, the UT stadium was expanded again when a $1.5 million horseshoe-shaped addition was constructed around the south end zone, increasing the seating capacity of the stadium to 46,390 people.
The dorm capacity inside the stadium was also raised, as the South stadium hall was made into a dorm with 166 rooms.
Designed by Rentenbach Engineering and UT civil engineering department head Armour T. Granger, the South addition featured Roman-style arches and detailed brickwork. After this end of the stadium was double decked in 1972 and 1976, the intricate architectural detail became almost inconspicuous behind the giant and exposed steel beams and girders.
Even after South Hall opened, however, East Hall continued as the football players’ dorm, said longtime Baylor School baseball coach Gene Etter, who lettered as a football player at UT from 1958-60.
In an interview, he recalled the East dorm with much fondness, remembering playing ping-pong in the lounge and watching on an early television set a Miss America pageant and the famous 1960 John F. Kennedy-Richard Nixon presidential debate.
He also remembers not being able to go into his dorm room for a few hours after the football upset by the University of Chattanooga (now UTC) in 1958, because teargas had been used to scatter the excited visiting fans.
Another memory, he said, is of sliding on a couch cushion down the steep hill by his dorm during a snowstorm and before stands took over the area around the North end zone.
The warm season was not quite as fun in the dorm, however, he added with a smile.
“The dorm had no air conditioning, so giant fans had been installed in the opposite side of the hallway, pulling the air away from the rooms,” he said. “To get the effect of the fans, players would open their doors and windows.”
Today, window air conditioning units dot the outside walls of the South and East wings like architectural trim.
The East Stadium building was also where the UT home dressing room was for a number of years until the team moved to below the North stadium end zone stands in 1983. The old locker room area is now used for UT and visiting spirit squads and storage, according to David Elliott with the Tennessee athletic event management office.
Another feature of the East Hall dorm in the 1950s and 1960s, according to Ms. Creekmore, was the popular Eva’s Café, which was managed by school food services employee Eva Spangler.
Although Neyland Stadium’s years of housing dorms or other non-athletic facilities have been long and full of rich history, that might change somewhat in the coming years. The current departments in South Hall are scheduled to be moved elsewhere within the next five years or so, according to UT spokesman Amy R. Blakely.
The anthropology department, for example, is pinpointed to move to an enlarged Sophronia Strong Hall.
Also, the recently announced UT Campaign for Comprehensive Excellence calls long term for the continued renovation of the stadium into increased game day-related uses. This would likely begin with the South hall offices and classes, although nothing has apparently been finalized.
If the future of Neyland Stadium eventually belongs strictly to football, it will mark the end of an era for a structure that has had multiple facets, as reflected by its numerous facades.
In fact, its past history for non-football uses seems almost as rich in a lower-key way as its primary role of hosting Tennessee Vol home football games.
Perhaps the popularity and charm of Neyland Stadium for non-athletic uses was most evident beginning in 1979, nearly 10 years after the stadium last served as a dorm.
That year, UT had more boarding students than dorm space, and the school thought it had a contract to house overflow dorm students at the Andrew Johnson Hotel in downtown Knoxville. However, that plan fell through at the last minute after the building changed ownership.
UT officials had to find another housing facility quickly, and the result was the East stadium dorm. Like a valuable football substitute admirably filling in for the starter, it became a popular hall again, former UT director of student housing Jim Grubb remembered.
In fact, it stayed open through the 1982 World’s Fair and until 1985 – about two years longer than the university wanted to keep it open – because the students enjoyed being in the unique-and-convenient location so much.
“It was a very popular place for students,” Mr. Grubb remembered. “They loved living over there.”
(To see some photographs of the parts of Neyland Stadium used for academics, click on the arrow on the YouTube slide show accompanying this story).
Jcshearer2@comcast.net