Getting into Neyland Stadium for the Third Saturday in October usually requires either generational family season tickets or a willingness to part with half a month’s rent.
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By Saturday afternoon, ahead of No. 14 Tennessee’s meeting with No. 6 Alabama, the cheapest upper-deck resale seats in Knoxville were hovering around $430, and the median ticket price had climbed past $620.
Twenty-year-old Blake Bible of Morristown, Tennessee, opted for a $40 workaround and might have pulled it off if he had just waited until he was through the gates to crack open a drink.
According to court records first reported Monday by WVLT News, University of Tennessee police officers arrested Bible outside the stadium just before the 3:30 p.m. ET broadcast window after catching him “pretending to be a security guard to sneak inside Neyland Stadium.”
The disguise itself was simple enough. Bible had somehow gotten his hands on an official staff polo shirt and hat belonging to Axis Security, the Johnson City-based private event staffing company that the university contracts to work gates and concourses on game days.
On a chaotic afternoon with 101,915 people packing the riverfront, a kid in an event polo walking with purpose near the G10 parking garage ramp on Phillip Fulmer Way is practically invisible.
Unless, of course, that on-duty security guard is casually walking down the ramp sipping a White Claw.
Police spotted Bible near the G10 ramp shortly before kickoff in full Axis gear “while drinking an alcoholic beverage,” a dead giveaway that prompted officers to stop him and call over an Axis supervisor working the perimeter.
Company officials took one look at him and told police that Bible didn’t work for them, confirming “that the shirt and hat were stolen in order to sneak into the game.”
According to the arrest warrants, the polo and cap were valued at roughly $40. The Axis supervisor chose to press charges on the spot.
Instead of watching Tennessee’s defense suffocate Alabama for three and a half hours, Bible was booked on a misdemeanor count of theft of property under $1,000.
He is scheduled to be arraigned in Knox County court on October 30. Remarkably, no underage drinking citation was listed alongside the theft charge in the initial booking report.
If there is a rulebook for bluffing your way past stadium turnstiles, rule number one is committing to the bit.
Carry a clipboard, wear a pair of khaki pants, keep your eyes forward, and above all else, do not drink a hard seltzer in front of campus police minutes before kickoff.
Bible’s busted uniform heist capped an unusually bizarre week for the University of Tennessee Police Department around the stadium footprint.
Just days earlier, UTPD tracked down and charged a 19-year-old visitor from New Jersey with felony vandalism after he knocked the head off the fiberglass Smokey statue outside Gate 21 Plaza the night before the Arkansas game.
That forced the university to swap in a replacement Smokey statue from the campus recreation center ahead of the Alabama crowd’s arrival. In a roundabout way, getting pulled aside at 3:30 p.m. may have saved Bible from actually having to work a shift he never signed up for.
Tennessee’s 26-10 victory gave the Vols their third straight home win over Alabama and left the Crimson Tide, now with two losses, outside the latest playoff projections.
Before fans rushed the field, athletic director Danny White appeared in a recorded message on the stadium video board. He asked them to stay in the stands for two minutes so Alabama’s players and coaches could get off the field.
The crowd didn’t hold for long. Fans poured over the walls and onto Shields-Watkins Field while the Tide were still making their way off the turf, triggering a $500,000 SEC access-to-competition-area fine that goes straight into Alabama’s athletic coffers.
Between Tennessee’s half-million-dollar tab and Bible’s Oct. 30 court date over $40 worth of stolen polyester, Saturday turned out to be an expensive afternoon for everyone who crossed a barrier they weren’t supposed to.