At 7:12 on Saturday night, when the Devils’ Billy Guerin scored, the sports bar ignored it. At 7:20, when Scott Niedermayer put the Devils ahead of the Philadelphia Flyers, 2-0, the joint shrugged.
But at 7:40, the Box Seat erupted in passion.
Not for a Devils goal, but for a home run by Tennessee’s Scott Schroeffel in the first inning of the Vols’ College World Series game against Clemson. By then, 13 of the restaurant’s 16 television sets had switched to the Tennessee game, leaving five fans on the second floor to savor the exploits of the team being offered a sweetheart deal to become this city’s first major-league sports team and the first major tenant of a new downtown arena.
Devils worship has not yet bewitched Music City, U.S.A., although the city’s pursuers of a professional franchise would like the names Brodeur, Lemieux and Broten to become as familiar here as Twitty, Haggard and Nelson, and the Nashville Arena to be as renowned as the Grand Ole Opry.
The local newspapers sent no one to cover the Devils-Flyers series. One local newscast didn’t even preview Saturday’s Devils game, favoring the Tennessee game, a high school baseball team, the Indiana-Orlando NBA playoff game, the French Open and a stock-car race.
“I hate hockey,” said Tim Miles, 27, who cheered the Volunteers downstairs at the Box Seat. “I’d never watch it and I’d never go to it. Basketball would be fine. But ask me anything about UT football.”
Among the upstairs hockey faithful were Alan Cherrington, 48, who teaches physiology at Vanderbilt University, and his 15-year-old son, Kevin. They were munching on chicken wings after the younger Cherrington’s youth hockey game.
“I’d love the Devils to come here,” said Alan Cherrington, a native of Montreal. “There’s more of a hockey culture here than people know. There is awareness. We have the Knights from the East Coast Hockey League. Youth hockey is saturated. Roller hockey is big. The Devils would get strong support, but I don’t know if they’d sell out, or even get 15 or 16,000.”
Across town at the Opry, as the Devils completed their 4-1 victory, Porter Wagoner was singing “The Last Thing on My Mind” to adoring country-western fans who rushed from the sweltering theater’s carpet-covered pews to snap photographs or shake Wagoner’s hand.
Between Wagoner, in his purple sequined suit and sparkling silver boots; the comedian Jerry Clower, with his elongated yarn about running out of gas in his dream pick-up truck, and the banjo playing of Grandpa Jones, hockey seemed the last thing on anyone’s mind. At least in Opryland U.S.A.
The pursuit of the Devils–who are embroiled in a lease dispute and renegotiation with the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which owns Byrne Meadowlands Arena–comes from official Nashville: Mayor Philip Bredesen, and Gaylord Entertainment, which owns Opryland, The Nashville Network and Ryman Auditorium, the Opry’s original home. Together they conceived the munificent financial giveaway they believe crucial to attracting a team, which includes a $20 million relocation bonus. And the city has handed Gaylord the job of luring a team to the arena, which is scheduled to be completed in 16 months and should seat about 19,000.
“We need a team here first, then we’ll build the enthusiasm,” said Jennifer Hannon, executive director of the Nashville Sports Council.
The arena needs to sell beer, too. The edge of the arena, along Broadway in the reviving downtown area, is 85 feet from First Baptist Church–15 feet too close according to a city ordinance that bans the sale of beer within 100 feet of a house of worship. The Nashville Metro Council will vote Monday on a bill to exempt the arena. Without beer, Bredesen said Saturday on the local news, “We can kiss professional sports goodbye.”
On a sweltering Saturday afternoon, hours before the Devils’ game, hockey just wasn’t the primary topic of conversation here. Workmen were in the midst of the week’s sixth double-shift schedule at the new arena. The electronic signboard at First Baptist read 92 degrees and gave the times for services and aerobics.
The home of the minor-league Knights, the Municipal Coliseum, was almost empty. Folding chairs and a stage awaited a Travis Tritt fan club gathering.
If the Devils found a way to break their lease in time to emigrate here next season, this 8,500-seat arena–shorter and narrower than the NHL standard, with inadequate sight lines and no giant video screens–would be the team’s temporary home.
“I think the Devils would draw well, they’d draw from all over, but it’d be a weekend thing,” said Bill Mason, a Coliseum worker who started 32 years ago running the Zamboni machine for the Dixie Flyers.
“The NBA’d be a better choice,” said Todd Gathings, 26, a training manager for Pizza Hut. “I don’t think hockey is the end-all of sports in Nashville. But I was in Charlotte when the Hornets got there and I’ve seen what a team can do to a city. Fifteen, 20 years ago, Charlotte was smaller than Nashville. Now it’s huge. Nashville is at a comparable step now.”
