Tennessee football won’t be rattled by Georgia crowd

On November 5th, Tennessee football will be heading down south to Athens, Ga., in attempt to knock off the Georgia Bulldogs. College Gameday will be in attendance, and all eyes will be on Hendon Hooker as he looks to extend his Heisman season resume.

The Vols have had no shortage of tough competition, with ranked wins against the Alabama Crimson Tide, Kentucky Wildcats, Florida Gators, Pittsburgh Panthers and LSU Tigers. However, three out of the five big wins this year came at home in Neyland Stadium.

Will there be a drop-off playing between the hedges in Sanford Stadium, or will Tennessee football overcome adversity and prove to the country why the College Football Playoff committee ranked them at No. 1 for the first time since 1998? The latter is the answer.

Sanford Stadium holds a little over 92,000 people, which may seem like a lot, but that is 10,000 less than Neyland Stadium. In a game like this, every person yelling and screaming can make a difference. The Vols are accustomed to some of the loudest and most hostile college football fans in the country.

Thousands of students at the University of Tennessee have already left for Athens, and there are many more to come. Rewind back to when Alabama played the Vols in Neyland Stadium. The noise meter got up above 120 decibels, which was the loudest in school history. For reference, 120 decibels is almost as loud as a jet engine and can cause immediate damage to your ears.

Saturday’s atmosphere at Sanford is going to feel like nothing to Volunteers. They should be able to weather the storm early in the game with their high powered offense. There’s no better way to silence a crowd then throwing a 40-yard bomb to Jalin Hyatt which seems almost like a guarantee to happen every single game.

Multiple tests have shown that the design, building material and the open end of the stadium don’t allow sound to travel well. It’s not like Neyland, The Swamp or Death Valley down in Baton Rouge, La., and the Vols just beat LSU down there last month.

Erik Ainge, who won twice at Georgia as Tennessee football’s quarterback and went 3-0 against them as a starter, tweeted as much earlier this week. Ja’Wuan James then retweeted Ainge, and although he never won at Georgia, he led an A+ offensive line performance against them in 2012.

Both times Ainge beat them, they were undefeated and in the top 10. In 2004, they were in the top five, and Ainge was a true freshman starting his first road game. Two years later, he led an offense that hung 50 on Georgia, as the Vols won 51-33.

With the whole city of Knoxville behind them, Tennessee football is going to shock the world on Saturday. This Cinderella run for the Vols seems like it’s only the beginning, and taking down the juggernauts in in Georgia is much-needed for them to prove it to the world.