September 10, 2016: American Football's Biggest Crowd

September 10, 2016, 10 years ago: The biggest crowd in the history of American football, at any level, is recorded. And not at a place known for hosting the sport.

The University of Tennessee is in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Virginia Polytechnic Institute, a.k.a. Virginia Tech, is in Blacksburg, Virginia. Their stadiums are 237 miles apart, separated by Interstates 81 and 40. However, they are not rivals, because they are in different leagues: Tennessee are in the Southeastern Conference (the SEC), Tech in the Atlantic Coast Conference (the ACC).

Perhaps the fact that they are not rivals made this neutral-site game easier to set up. Tech's Lane Stadium seats 65,632. Tennessee's Neyland Stadium seats 101,915. But they set up a game against each other at a racetrack, the Bristol Motor Speedway, in Bristol, Tennessee, 110 miles from Neyland Stadium, 138 miles from Lane Stadium, and 7 miles from the Virginia/Tennessee State Line that Bristol straddles. (Bristol, Virginia is home to 17,000 people; Bristol, Tennessee, to 26,000.)

The Speedway opened in 1961, is a regular on the NASCAR "short track" circuit, and is known as "The World's Fastest Half Mile." Officially, it seats 153,000. But when the Tennessee Volunteers and the Virginia Tech Hokies played each other there on September 10, 2016, the attendance was a new record for a game of the sport the rest of the world calls "American football": 156,990.

The current NFL record is 112,376, for an exhibition game at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City in 1994. The Houston Oilers beat the Dallas Cowboys, 6-0. The biggest crowd for a regular-season game was 105,121 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on September 20, 2009. The Cowboys lost this one, too, to the New York Giants, 33-31.

Here's what the 156,990 at "The Battle at Bristol" saw. Tech scored 2 touchdowns in the 1st quarter, for a 14-0 lead. The Volunteers took over from there, scoring 31 unanswered points: 4 touchdowns and a field goal, making it 31-14. The Hokies added a field goal to close it to within 31-17 at the end of 3 quarters.

The Vols scored 2 more touchdowns in the 4th quarter. The Hokies added a touchdown, but that would be it: Tennessee 45, Virginia Tech 24. Tech football is known for 2 things: Michael Vick and good defense. On this night, they had neither.

Tennessee went 9-4, staying at home for the postseason, winning the Music City Bowl in Nashville. Virginia Tech went 10-4, winning the Coastal Division of the ACC, losing the ACC Championship Game to Clemson, and winning the Belk Bowl (now the Duke's Mayo Bowl) in Charlotte.

August 12, 1676: The Death of Metacomet Ends King Philip's War

August 12, 1676, 350 years ago: Metacomet, the Sachem of the Wampanoag tribe, is killed in battle. This ends what the English colonists in America called "King Philip's War." Which was nasty.

He was believed to have been born in 1638, in Massachusetts. His father Massasoit and his older brother Wamsutta were Sachem before him. But they died in quick succession in 1661 and 1662 and Metacomet believed they were poisoned by the English. Wamsutta's widow, Weetamoo, became a key ally, and let him marry her sister, Wootonekanuske.

In 1660, Wamsutta and Metacomet went to the court of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and requested English names. Wamsutta was named Alexander, and Metacomet was named Philip. This may have been foreshadowing of later trouble, although Alexander the Great was the son of King Philip II of Macedonia; in this case, a Philip followed a relative named Alexander as king.

"King Philip," as the English now knew him, used tribal alliances to coordinate efforts to push European colonists out of New England. Many of the native tribes in the region wanted to push out the colonists following conflicts over land use, diminished game as a consequence of expanding European settlement, and other tensions.

To the west, the Iroquois Confederation of New York was also fighting against neighboring tribes in the Beaver Wars, pushing them from the west and encroaching on Metacom's territory. Finally, in 1671, the colonial leaders of the Plymouth Colony forced major concessions from Metacomet. He surrendered much of his tribe's armament and ammunition, and agreed that they were subject to English law.

The encroachment continued until hostilities broke out on June 20, 1675, when a band of Pokanokets attacked several isolated homesteads in the small Plymouth colony settlement of Swansea, burning several homes, likely against Phillip's approval. 

As the colonists brought their growing numbers to bear, King Philip and some of his followers took refuge in the great Assowampset Swamp in southern Massachusetts, in the area now occupied by New Bedford and Fall River. He held out for a time, with his family and remaining followers.

On August 12, 1676, hunted by a group of rangers led by Captain Benjamin Church, Metacomet was fatally shot at Mount Hope, now part of Bristol, Rhode Island, by John Alderman, a "praying Indian" (a Native American who had converted to Christianity), whose brother had been killed by Metacomet's men. The Sachem was probably 38 years old.

Metacomet's head was severed, and mounted on a pike at the entrance to Plymouth, where it stayed for over 20 years. Alderman was given Philip's right hand as a trophy. Remaining Native Americans that weren't killed during the war relocated to join other tribes or reservations, while many Native American leaders were sold into slavery, including Wootonekanuske and the one son that Metacomet was known to have had, taken to the English colony of Bermuda. The Mitchell family of Middleboro, Massachusetts claimed to be descended from that son.

King Philip's War is considered by many to be the deadliest war in Colonial American history. In the space of little more than a year, 12 of the region's towns were destroyed, and many more were damaged. The economy of the Plymouth and Rhode Island Colonies was ruined, and they lost 1/10th of all men available for military service -- literally, decimated. And they were still better off in the end than their opponents: Hundreds of Wampanoags and their allies were publicly executed or enslaved, and the Wampanoags were left effectively landless.

It was the last-ditch effort by Native tribes to expel the colonists from New England. Instead, it turned out to be the beginning of the development of an independent American identity. The New England colonists faced their enemies without support from any European government or military, and this began to give them a group identity separate and distinct from England.

Disclaimer: Much of this post is taken from Wikipedia's entries on Metacomet and the war.