25 best college football fan atmospheres

17. Tennessee Volunteers

It takes a certain kind of people to get excited about being called “Volunteers”, but Tennessee fans fit the bill. If you’ve ever gotten into a Twitter beef with one of these fans, you know exactly how passionate they are.

The tailgating experience is great in Knoxville. The smell of Tennessee BBQ spreads across the parking lots of Neyland Stadium. It’s really an experience in itself. Everyone is cross mingling between tailgates. There are hundreds of RVs across the parking lots.

There’s the Vol Navy that comes down the Tennessee River on game day. It’s called “sail-gating” and it’s one of the experiences of the Tennessee football experience that makes it so different than other tailgates. Coming down the river has that same feeling of walking out of the tunnel. This is what takes the tailgating experience to the next level.

The Vol Walk is another great tradition of the Volunteers. Sure, they literally stole it from Auburn, but that doesn’t take away from how special it is to the game-day experience. The marching band blares its sounds of the game down the street like a parade, the team comes rumbling down after walking past the Walk of Fame, and the fans hit a fever pitch once everything is said and done.

This is all without even mentioning Rocky Top. Every team needs a good song, and Rocky Top by the Osbourne Brothers is one of the best. It blasts in the bars and nightclubs before and after game day, it is played by the band, and it blasts through the stadium loudspeakers. You may not know the song now, but if you go to one Tennessee game, you’ll know it by heart.