In his first year of racing at Kansas Speedway a decade ago, Pat Warren drove then-Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez to the track and Gonzalez wanted to know the seating capacity. Warren told him 82,000.
"On one side?" Gonzalez asked.
Indeed. If the seating wrapped around the track, like a football stadium, the number would more than double and perhaps Kansas Speedway would be in business for a football game, like Bristol Motor Speedway this week.
On Saturday, Virginia Tech and Tennessee will battle at the structure known as the "last great Colosseum." More than 150,000 are expected to attend, and that will make it the largest crowd to ever witness a football game, college or NFL.
The game was announced in 2013 and matches teams that are equidistant to Bristol, a city that sits on the Tennessee-Virginia border with the state line running through it.
Each school sold more than 40,000 tickets and in a budget bonanza will receive $4 million apiece in revenue.
The morning after the Aug. 21 NASCAR Sprint Cup race, 450 truckloads of rock and sand evened out the bowl-shaped infield. Some 100,000 square feet of AstroTurf formed the field.
As for locker rooms, the Vols will dress in the reconfigured driver's meeting room. The Hokies will use a tire mounting area.
Could this start gridiron-to-track trend? Not at Kansas, said Warren, who worked in college athletics before becoming the speedway's president.
No bowl seating, as Gonzalez noted, and distant sightlines would be an issue. Pit road at Kansas is 2,220 feet, more than seven football fields long. But to Warren, there's another obvious answer: it sits at the other junction of Interstates 70 and 435.
"We have a phenomenal venue for that called Arrowhead Stadium," Warren said. "We couldn't offer the in-game experience that you'd get at Arrowhead."
With a football game scheduled at motor speedway, you might be wondering if there has been an auto race in a football stadium? Warren is glad you asked.
In the 1930s, Chicago's Soldier Field was the site of midget auto racing. Stock cars ran there in the 1950s and 1960s.
