Alisha Longworth watched as the Savannah Bananas made their second and final stop in Knoxville at Neyland Stadium on May 23, a sold-out spectacle that university officials had been planning for more than a year.
The Bananas faced the Texas Tailgaters as part of the 190-game Banana Ball World Tour, a game that tickets for Neyland Stadium had been sold out since December and for which the university said 100,000 people were expected. Fans unable to attend in person could stream the matchup on the Savannah Bananas' YouTube channel, the app, and Disney+.
The day began long before first pitch. A pre-game plaza along Phillip Fulmer Way and Peyton Manning Pass opened at 2 p.m., followed by the "Before the Peel" show at 3 p.m. Gates at Neyland opened at 4:30 p.m., player introductions began at 6:30 p.m., and the game was scheduled to start at 7 p.m.
Organizers billed the evening as historic: Neyland Stadium, which has a capacity of 101,915, had not hosted baseball since 1921. The Savannah Bananas had played two nights earlier at Covenant Health Park on May 21, then moved to Neyland for the May 23 event.
Longworth described how the stadium was prepared for baseball: "You’ve got to bring in the clay, you’ve got to bring in the dirt, you’ve got to get the mound," she said, adding that "Our grounds crew has been very busy for the last three plus weeks." University staff said the grounds crew spent more than three weeks transforming the football field into a baseball diamond.
Planning for the event began more than a year ago after the Bananas reached out about a football stadium tour, and the university used the Bananas game — along with a recent concert — as a test of traffic patterns ahead of the football season. In the fall the university launched a traffic study with Visit Knoxville, KPD, UTPD and other partners to prepare for the influx.
Longworth put the numbers in plain terms: "When you put 100,000 people in Neyland Stadium, the economic impact for the entire city is great," she said. "It’s good for the local community. It’s good for hotels. It’s good for restaurants." The university expected many out-of-town visitors for the games.
Logistics were tightly choreographed. Fans who had not pre-purchased parking were encouraged to use Park and Ride shuttles from the Civic Coliseum or Market Square area; shuttles from the Civic Coliseum cost $25 round trip. After the game Neyland Drive funneled leaving cars into three westbound lanes toward Alcoa Highway, I-40 and Kingston Pike, with no eastbound traffic allowed during exit operations.
That choreography created a point of friction: a football stadium turned into a baseball diamond and then expected to be returned for fall play. Longworth waved away those concerns with a pair of short assurances: "Absolutely no worries," she said. "They have nothing to worry about. We will be ready for kickoff in the fall."
For Knoxville, the immediate return is clear — a sold-out, streamed event tied to a 190-game tour and the promise of citywide spending from visitors. For the University of Tennessee, the Savannah Bananas stop at Neyland was a full-scale rehearsal for moving hundreds of thousands of people through the campus and measuring whether the new traffic and field-conversion plans will hold up when football season begins.
