KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to spend Saturday in Knoxville, where he will watch No. 14 Tennessee host No. 7 Alabama at Neyland Stadium and fold the trip into a military outreach swing he started last month.
The Department of Defense announced the stop. Beyond the game, Hegseth is scheduled to meet with University of Tennessee ROTC cadets and give the oath of enlistment to a group of new recruits.
The visit is part of what Hegseth calls his Send Me Tour, a military outreach and recruitment initiative. On Oct. 3 he addressed cadets in Colorado Springs at the Air Force Academy ahead of its home game with Navy, an earlier stop on the same tour.
It is the second high-profile federal visit to the stadium in less than a month. President Donald Trump attended the Vols game against Texas at Neyland on Sept. 26.
Hegseth has local ties to the program as a fan. He and his family lived in Middle Tennessee before he moved to Washington, and he was at Neyland in 2024 when Tennessee beat Alabama at home for the second straight time. He earned his degrees at Princeton and Harvard, not at Tennessee.
The Southeastern Conference rivalry game is the main event of the weekend in Knoxville. Neyland Stadium is the home venue for Volunteers football on fall Saturdays. The stadium holds 102,455 people and anchors a campus that covers about 910 acres along the south bank of the Tennessee River, and Knoxville’s campus district will be packed from morning on. Fans heading downtown should plan for heavier security and crowds around a game that already draws one of the largest home audiences of the season.
Section: More Knoxville TN politics news
Filed under: Knoxville TN Politics News
