Josh Heupel on the Vols takeover

On By Littum

Coach Josh Heupel isn’t surprised Tennessee football fans are attempting an invasion of Ohio State’s stadium for Saturday’s College Football Playoff game.

“Not (surprised) with this fan base,” Heupel said Monday as the Vols enter the game week. “It’s a nice short drive up there (to Columbus, Ohio). Christmas is around the corner and (a CFP ticket) would be a great Christmas gift.

“Hope to see a bunch of our fans up there.”

Seed no. 9 in Tennessee (10-2) plays No. 8 Ohio State (10-2) on Saturday (8 p.m. ET, ABC/ESPN) in Columbus, Ohio in a first-round CFP game.

Ohio Stadium, nicknamed “The Shoe”, has a capacity of 102,780. And UT fans are only promised about 3% of those seats.

But there is strong evidence that many more UT fans will be in attendance for the Vols’ first playoff game. They have gone to great lengths to secure tickets outside of traditional means.

Ohio State announced a “scarlet out” for its home game. But Ohio State administrators have expressed concern that lots of orange could be sprinkled all over the stadium.

Running back Dylan Sampson said the enthusiasm of Tennessee fans to buy tickets reminds him of the LSU game in 2022. The Vols beat LSU 40-13 at Tiger Stadium as their fans made their presence loudly known in the fourth quarter.

“It doesn’t surprise me. I’m just thinking about a few years ago at LSU. It felt like a home game,” Sampson said. “That’s what I expect from Tennessee fans. I can’t wait to get out there and see a whole bunch of oranges.”

Ohio State AD: ‘Don’t sell your tickets’

CFP road teams are allocated only 3,500 tickets, and most of those are for institutional needs such as players’ families, marching band and UT staff. UT expects only 1,000 tickets to be available to donors.

Compare that to the 5,000 tickets available to visiting teams in regular-season SEC games.

But UT fans have snapped up a lot of tickets on the secondary market. And some have claimed on social media that crack the Ohio State presale code to purchase more tickets.

On Thursday, Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork expressed concern that UT fans were buying tickets from Buckeyes’ fans.

“Don’t sell your tickets,” Bjork told 97.1 The Fan’s Morning Juice. “Tennessee fans, they’re rabid fans. They’re going to invade the ‘Shoe.’ So let’s make sure we don’t have as much orange in there as people think.”

How many Tennessee fans will be at CFP game?

Also on Thursday, UT System President Randy Boyd posted a picture on social media of him with Ohio State President Ted Carter at a university event. Boyd wrote that Carter “thinks the stadium might be 30% orange.”

Of course, 30% is an estimate at best.

It would be quite a feat for UT fans to fill 10% of Ohio Stadium, especially given the ticket demand that would accompany a playoff game on campus.

The possibility of putting 20,000 or 30,000 fans is eye-opening. The stage was to answer the question on Saturday night.

The passion of Tennessee’s fan base is well-founded. The Vols have 20 straight sellouts at Neyland Stadium, which has a capacity of 101,915. And UT athletic director Danny White recently announced that the season ticket waiting list has surpassed 20,000.

Adam Sparks is the Tennessee football beat reporter. E-mail [email protected]. X, formerly known as Twitter@AdamSparks. Support strong local journalism by subscribing knoxnews.com/subscribe.

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