During the first quarter of Tennessee’s loss to No. 1 Georgia Saturday, the Vols pulled out all the stops during timeouts. Tennessee athletics legends Peyton Manning, Candace Parker, Monica Abbott and Todd Helton were all honored on the field during separate time outs.
Tennessee had one other interesting trick up its sleeve, playing a video that included numerous shots of the V O L S big letters that used to rest at the top of the upper deck in the south end zone of Neyland Stadium. The video ended with a simple message, “coming back soon”.
During the timeout, Tennessee played a hype video for the big V O L S letters above the scoreboard.
Ended with "coming back soon"
— Ryan Schumpert (@rschump00) November 13, 2021
Wednesday, Tennessee released that video on Twitter, making it clear that the big letters will return, likely at the start of the 2022 season, in part of the Neyland Stadium renovation project.
This is Tennessee | @utmedicalcenter pic.twitter.com/t4M7PXUYnf
— Vol Network (@VolNetwork) November 17, 2021
Tennessee had been hinting at the letters return for a while. The Vols placed the signs that hung above the Neyland Stadium jumbotron for years outside of Gate 21 for the South Carolina game in October. In his tweet announcing their location, director of athletics Danny White hinted at their full time return.
The university hasn’t announced any formal plans for where the letters will be or how the factor into the Neyland Stadium renovation plan.
The renovation plan includes adding a video board to the north end zone as well as a party deck with numerous televisions. It seems more likely that they will be added back to the south end zone.
The other major question is how big will the signs be? The ones that were above the south end zone video screen were much smaller than the one’s that hung above the stadium for decades.
Here is the V O L S signs above the video board.
Here is the V O L S signs before the video boards.
Obviously, Tennessee is limited in their size because there is a video board there now. However, they could still be much bigger than they formerly were when they were on top of the video board.
