Wife and I just spent a few days driving from ATL up thru the smokies to check out Knoxville. Plan was to check their campus and then either cruise up to check out Lexington or cut the trip short and head home thru VA. We drove around town, spent some time in their walk-around-square area with shops and restaurants, it was decent and reminded her of her time at UVA. But for the campus itself, f'n ugly. We couldn't get in the stadium to check it out, but we walked all the way around. It looks like all the ticket windows are from the 40's and 50's, something most HS's have moved past, and it was somewhat funny looking up at their upper seating from the outside. Joke Campbell is known as the erector set, and we both know BHG with the massive concrete in comparison which supports the upper seating all around. At UT it looked like someone just added upper seating and stuck tinker toy rods and hubs to hold it up. Pretty comical. Driving around the rest of it was very blah, not even up to meh standards, IMO. We did check out the World's Fair park in Knoxville, waved at the Sun Sphere, and booked it out of town. We'll plan to make a trip someday to watch the Gators win, but the college experience was underwhelming there.
We cut the trip short, stayed at VT on the way home to PA. Have to say, much better campus. As a bonus, it was orientation day so the basketball arena was open, with halls connecting to the athletic offices, a tunnel over to the indoor facility, and the stadium was also open. Nice program, nice facilities but not over the top or awesome. Campus itself was much more enjoyable than UT as well. Maybe we'll take a trip there sometime as we do love college football.