Tennessee fans answered the call to checker Neyland Stadium for today’s game against Florida. After weeks of campaigning, the movement started by Tennessee fans and web developers Tim McLeod and Jonathan Briehl has proven to work. The Knoxville News Sentinel posted a timelapse of fans filing into the stadium before kickoff.
Tennessee fans started a movement to checker Neyland Stadium leading up to the team’s Oct. 4 matchup against Florida. Web developers Tim McLeod and Jonathan Briehl launched checkerneyland.com with a concept inspired by the following tweet:
If Oklahoma can stripe their stands in shirts, I don’t see why this can’t be done in Neyland…. #VolArtConceptpic.twitter.com/H6jYHMI2Qx — Spencer Barnett (@CleVOLander) September 15, 2014
“A friend tweeted a picture and I came up with the concept.” McLeod said. “We built the site over the next few days. It took a while to map the stadium out. Lots of coffee.”
“We knocked out the concept, UI, and framework in a day,” Briehl added. “Finding the stadium layout and verifying was the hardest part. We’d love to see it take off and have the word spread in about a week to see the stadium checkered for the Florida game.”
Spencer Barnett, a graphic designer and Tennessee fan, was responsible for the proposed image of a checkered Neyland Stadium. Barnett says his inspiration came during Tennessee’s 34-10 loss to Oklahoma in Week 3.
“It goes back to during the OU game and when I saw an image on here of where they striped their stadium,” Barnett said. “I thought ‘that looks slick, but I think we can do that and do it better’. So I did a search to find an image of Neyland at near capacity and then I Photoshopped it create the orange and white sections.”
A former freelance journalist from Nashville, Jason covers Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Kentucky
