What's with the more than 30 organized squads snapping all the smartphone pictures up and down Cumberland Avenue? Is it the Vol paparazzi? Have University of Tennessee communications professors dispatched teams of documentarians to record hundreds of images of the week before the Battle at Bristol?
Nope. Neither.
It's the kickoff of the four-day "Battle at Cumberland Avenue Scavenger Hunt - Celebrating College Football's Biggest Ever." The Cumberland Avenue Merchants Association is offering big prizes to the teams showing the most creativity and hustle. The first-place prize is two bicycles from Regions Bank ($500 value) and $2,000 in merchant gift cards. Runners-up gift packages are valued at $1,500 and $1,000.
The aim is to capture the excitement and buzz on The Strip this week, heading into the much-ballyhooed Battle at Bristol on Saturday, Sept. 10, when the University of Tennessee Vols take on Virginia Tech at a neutral site midway between the schools. More than 150,000 seats were presold last spring, creating the largest crowd to ever watch a college football game.
It's not too late to form a team and jump into the "Battle at Cumberland Avenue." To get started, teams must register at www.CumberlandConnect.com. The hunt started at 8 a.m. today and ends at 10 p.m. Friday, Sept. 9. Teams are posting to social media a series of photos involving Cumberland merchants and fun and campy happenings on The Strip this week.
Even the City’s $17 million investment in the Cumberland Avenue reconstruction is part of the scavenger hunt. This week, crews are excavating pre-World War II trolley tracks from a three-block stretch of Cumberland, and westbound motorists are being shifted to a different lane during the day and detoured off Cumberland at night. But that won't hinder the scavenger hunt teams! In fact, they'll be awarded extra points for safely incorporating images of construction workers and some of the new improvements on Cumberland.
Leave it to the Cumberland Avenue merchants to have fun - even with construction happening!
The Cumberland project is now midway toward completion. But flash back to this time a year ago, when the work was still in its beginning stages: The Cumberland Avenue merchants threw the first-ever Brick by Brick Pregame on the Strip Block Party on Sept. 5, 2015. Mayor Rogero celebrated with the merchants (see photo below) and large numbers of Vol fans before a UT season-opening blowout win.
Stay tuned for developments on this week's "Battle at Cumberland Avenue" scavenger hunt. Watch for those enthusiastic teams choreographing their performance art and collecting fun photos!