Butch Jones gestures that he wants to speak with the referee. The Vanderbilt Commodores visited the Tennessee Volunteers in SEC football action November 28, 2015.KNOXVILLE – Tennessee shortened its wait for football season and entered new territory with a significant alteration to its 2016 schedule.
The school announced Friday that the Volunteers’ season opener against Appalachian State will be played on Thursday night (Sept. 1) instead of that Saturday as originally scheduled.
The game will be at 7:30 p.m. and televised on the SEC Network.
“The opportunity to open up on a Thursday night in Neyland Stadium, it’s going to be electric,” Vols coach Butch Jones said on a conference call Friday afternoon.
“It’s just a great opportunity for our fans, for our student body. Any chance you get to play in Neyland Stadium at night, obviously we know it’s electric. Any time, it’s special, and it’s being a part of history.”
Tennessee’s last Thursday home game was a 46-0 rout of Kentucky on Thanksgiving Day in 1938, when the Vols went 11-0 and allowed only 16 points during a national championship season.
The Vols last opened a season with a Thursday home game in 1896, when the fourth varsity team in school history opened a four-game season with a 10-6 win against the Williamsburg Institute (now the University of the Cumberlands).
In 2014 Tennessee opened on a Sunday night and beat Utah State 38-7.
Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart indicated that Southeastern Conference officials approached him during the recent meetings for the league’s athletic directors’ meeting in Jacksonville about moving the game following a request from ESPN.
“I visited with Butch Jones about it upon my return to gauge his interest prior to my conversations with appropriate campus personnel,” Hart said in a released statement.
“He was very interested in making the change.”
Hart then had those conversations with various people on campus about the logistics of moving a game and all the operations that come with it to a weeknight.
“This decision was not made in a vacuum,” he said.
“Challenges related to the implementation were identified and discussed at length over the course of several days. “Academics was our collective primary concern. Our goal will be to do this with minimal impact to the class schedule.
“At the end of the day the deliberations all were supportive of moving forward with the game on Thursday night ahead of the barrage of games to follow throughout the Labor Day weekend.”
Reactions from Tennessee fans on social media were mixed. The change will affect most those who live too far from Knoxville to make the trip in one swoop, while fans who booked hotels and arranged travel will have to adjust. Many fans may not be able to take off work that Thursday and/or Friday to make it to the game.
Other fans were upset because of the perception that Thursday night games were below Tennessee, though the list of premier programs that played Thursday night games last season included Clemson, Auburn, Southern California, Texas, Baylor, Oregon Stanford, UCLA and Miami.
Alabama moved a November game against Georgia State to Thursday night in 2010.
Tennessee officials indicated the game would have kicked off at noon had it remained on Saturday.
“I thought it was a great idea,” Jones said. “I thought it was great for our fans, great for our student body and great for our student-athletes. The alternative, I believe, was to play a noon game on Saturday.
“Any chance you get an opportunity to play a night game at Neyland Stadium with the environment and student body – I would think our fans would be really excited about it, too, with the weekend and with the holiday and all that.”
Though Appalachian State won 11 games in 2015, moving the game will prevent Tennessee’s opener from getting lost among the marquee games involving SEC teams on the season’s opening Saturday.
Alabama (vs. USC in Arlington, Texas), Georgia (vs. North Carolina in Atlanta) and LSU (vs. Wisconsin in Green Bay) all play neutral-site games, while Texas A&M (UCLA) and Auburn (Clemson) will face big-time opponents at home.
The move also gives the Vols and athletic department personnel extra time to ready for the Battle at Bristol against Virginia Tech the following Saturday.
“I give our administration credit,” Jones said. “I give Dave Hart credit and I give (credit) to a lot of people involved, because this is a decision that everyone has to be united and unified upon. There’s some challenges and some logistical challenges, but everyone did a great job and we’ll continue to work through those.”
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com