Nashville is ready to show why it’s the perfect host for the NFL Draft

It was a cool, blustery evening with the temperature in the 40s when the Tennessee Titans unveiled new uniforms in April 2018. One day earlier, the surprise of the redesign was ruined when a leaked photograph made social media rounds.

Despite the weather, despite the jersey being spoiled, and despite the fact it was really just a football-themed fashion show, a crowd of about 20,000 fans packed Broadway in downtown Nashville anyway.

To put in perspective how ludicrous the attendance was, consider the New York Jets’ uniform reveal earlier this month had a pretty solid showing of “over 400 fans” in the middle of Manhattan. That’s fine, because it’s just a uniform reveal.

Titans fans showed up in a force 50 times larger even though they’d ALREADY SEEN THE LEAKED JERSEY ONLINE.

To be fair, fans in Nashville got more than just a look at new uniforms. They also got to take in a concert from country band Florida Georgia Line. Titans general manager Jon Robinson and head coach Mike Vrabel sipped on beers while they stood on stage. Everyone there was having a good time in a very Nashville fashion.

More than that, the production was impressive enough that it convinced the NFL that Nashville was ready for something bigger. A month later, the city was awarded the 2019 NFL Draft — a three-day spectacle that will likely be the biggest sporting event in Tennessee history.

Nashville is a city known for its country music and honky-tonks, but it also has a slept-on love for sports. The 2019 NFL Draft is the perfect opportunity for the city to show off exactly who it is — and give the NFL the party it wants.

No one in Nashville was too surprised by the crowd at the uniform reveal

In 2015, the NFL held its draft in Chicago — snapping a 50-year streak of the event being in New York City. Chicago hosted again in 2016, then it was Philadelphia in 2017, and Dallas in 2018.

But those cities are the homes of the Bears, Eagles, and Cowboys — three of the most storied and popular franchises in the NFL in three of the most populous cities in the United States.

Nashville and the Titans can’t say the same.

In June 2018, sports analytics expert Mike Lewis of Emory University did his annual NFL Fan and Brand Report that ranks fan interest and brand recognizability. The Cowboys, Eagles, and Bears were all in the top six. The Titans were dead last.

So a crowd of 20,000 people showing up to see new uniforms should’ve been a jaw-dropping amount, right?

Not to the Titans and other Nashville officials it wasn’t.

“We weren’t taken off guard by how many people showed up,” Titans president and CEO Steve Underwood told SB Nation. “We thought there would be a big crowd. Now granted, it was even bigger than we anticipated. We may not have quite the stature of some other NFL teams in large markets, but we’re very big here, and people are avid fans of the Titans here.

“People that we know in the special events department at the league were so impressed by the uniform reveal. It wasn’t just the number of people, it was how lively and excited everyone was to be downtown, and to be participating in something that had to do — not just with our club — but with the NFL, on a giant stage. The league had never seen anything like that in terms of a uniform reveal. It really put a spotlight on Nashville and it convinced people in the league to bring the draft here.”

But the stage was set a year earlier by the other major professional sports franchise in Nashville. The NHL’s Predators, for the first time in their history, advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2017 and the city caught hockey fever.

Even Titans players joined in the mania, with Marcus Mariota and some rowdy offensive linemen taking in Predators games. They took off their shirts, chugged beers for the crowd, and Taylor Lewan poured beer off a catfish.

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“The support of this city was unbelievable,” said Deana Ivey, vice president of the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp. The organization produces special events for the city, and put on viewing parties for Predators games during their run to the Finals.

“It just grew and grew and grew,” Ivey said. “They started out with like 10,000 people, then it was 20,000, and by the end we had like 50,000 people in the street watching on big video screens cheering on the team. Everybody came out in force and supported. It’s a great atmosphere for sports here.”

The huge crowds that packed the streets in downtown Nashville several times per week during the Predators’ run proved, more than anything, that the city just really loves a party.

So when Nashville had a chance for more festivities — even if it was just to see an already-revealed uniform — it was ready to go.

“[The city] was coming off that Predators’ run when they were having thousands of people downtown every night,” Jimmy Morris, a Titans blogger for SB Nation’s Music City Miracles, said. “It just kind of became a cool thing to do.”

The city’s newfound love for gigantic sports parties on Broadway led to a one-of-a-kind unveiling.

“[The NFL] saw that it was packed — basically people came out for a fashion show to see uniforms — and the league was like, ‘Wow! You can draw this kind of crowd and this kind of excitement for something like that? This is huge,’” Ivey said.

“The size of Nashville I think works to our advantage. When it’s something like that or the draft, it’s a big deal. In some cities it might just be another thing happening, but here it’s a big deal and people get excited and on board. I think that really got the NFL’s attention.”

Nashville is still relatively new to the pro sports game

Just over 20 years ago, the only professional sports team in Tennessee’s capital was the Nashville Sounds, a Minor League Baseball team that arrived in 1978.

The Nashville Sports Council was founded in 1992 to bring major sports events to the city, but with so few facilities to work with, its hands were more or less tied. Then the Houston Oilers relocated to Tennessee in 1997, and the NHL awarded an expansion franchise to Nashville that began play in 1998. Just like that, the city had two world-class facilities: Nissan Stadium (originally Adelphia Coliseum) and Bridgestone Arena (originally Nashville Arena).

In the first year after the Oilers changed their name to the Titans, the team went to Super Bowl 34.

“They didn’t lose a home game that whole year, then they make that Super Bowl run,” Morris said. “So it was nuts immediately when they became the Titans. People didn’t care as much before, when they were the Tennessee Oilers. But once they became the Titans, that’s when they became really good. For a while there that was all anyone talked about in the city. Since then it’s probably dropped off a bit.”

It hasn’t helped that the Titans have been to the playoffs once in the last 10 seasons.

New facilities didn’t make getting events a breeze either. Locking down something anywhere near the scale of the NFL Draft took a long time. Nashville hosted the NCAA Women’s Final Four in 2014, the NHL All-Star Game in 2016, and it is set to hold the SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament every year until 2035.

The 2019 NFL Draft will trump them all, but it became a feasible event for Nashville to land because of what the NFL wants it to become.

“They changed the format to more of a festival, and I think that really fits our city as well as anything,” Nashville Sports Council CEO Scott Ramsey said. “I think it’s really going to resonate the personality of the Music City. You’re going to see the fun factor of Downtown Nashville. I think that’s kind of what the NFL is looking for when they’re moving around is a showcase of the respective cities, and I think certainly think ours will be centered around music and entertainment, and the real downtown platform that we have.”

The challenge will be handling its massive scale.

“We think it’ll be the largest sporting event in the history of Tennessee,” Underwood said. “We’re estimating crowds on Thursday of 100,000 to 150,000, and we think we’ll see comparable crowds on Friday. It’ll be the biggest crowd in downtown Nashville history.”

While Nashville doesn’t have a lengthy history of pro sports, it’s in the middle of SEC country. It also has a famously vibrant music scene. Concerts like the annual CMA Music Festival, and the city’s Fourth of July celebrations, have tested the Nashville’s ability to hold a huge event.

Photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for Universal Music Group Nashville

“Our police force, our public works department, our fire department — they’re all used to doing these big events and they cooperate, and everyone works together,” Ivey said. “I think [the NFL] saw that we have strong communication and work together on big events. When you’re going into a city that you haven’t worked with before, you want to make sure this all gels and everyone is on board. We were able to prove that.”

On top of it all, the city is also preparing to host the annual Rock ‘n’ Roll Nashville Marathon — which is set to begin Saturday during the third day of the draft. .

“It’ll be the largest opportunity and stage we’ve been able to play on,” Ramsey said. “The attendance along with our marathon that weekend is going to be astronomical.”

Amy Adams Strunk “reinvigorated” Titans fans

The size of the media market in Nashville may mean the Titans never create a brand with the kind of recognizability of the NFL’s most popular teams. But either way, the Titans are underachieving.

“There’s a pretty passionate core here, but they don’t have the national following that a lot of other teams do,” Morris said. “One, they don’t have the history and, two, it’s a small market. I think the [national] perception is probably somewhat right. It’s a bit of a fair-weather fanbase. I think things are starting to swing back the other way.”

Leading the push to get the Titans back into the spotlight is Amy Adams Strunk.

Her father, Bud Adams, founded the Houston Oilers in 1960 and brought the franchise to Tennessee. After his death in 2013, his daughter Susie Adams Smith became the controlling owner and her husband, Tommy Smith, was the team president.

“Everyone was kind of lukewarm on the Adams family after Bud died because it didn’t really seem like they were interested in running a football team,” Morris said. “[Smith’s] the one who hired Ken Whisenhunt, and it just didn’t feel like they cared what the fans thought.”

Two years later, Strunk took over as controlling owner and won the hearts of Titans fans.

“Amy Adams Strunk has been out in front and really seems to care,” Morris said. “She’s done a ton to invest in the community, invest in the facility, the fan experience. She’s really endeared herself to the fans here.”

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Underwood says it’s Strunk who deserves most of the credit for how well the uniform reveal went a year ago.

“I think our owner reinvigorated our brand. Amy has meant so much to our fans here. Having her be part of our show and her wanting the new uniform and helping to design the new uniform, promoting the new uniform, helped set the stage for such an outpouring from Titans fans.”

Strunk hired Jon Robinson as general manager in 2016, and Mike Vrabel as head coach in 2018. After three consecutive winning seasons, she may have the Titans on the verge of recapturing some of the fan excitement that dwindled over the last two decades.

Nashville views the NFL Draft as an opportunity — and vice versa

What the 2018 uniform reveal really provided was a glimpse at what the NFL wants the draft to become. ESPN’s Cameron Wolfe wrote that the league’s vision is a draft that looks an awful lot like the scene that was on stage in Nashville a year ago:

The NFL doesn’t want a buttoned-up draft. Throughout the process, the league repeatedly said it wants the host city to “reinvent the wheel” -- to make it a fun event that takes on the personality of its host city.

This year, Nashville plans to use the spotlight to do what it does best: throw a country-themed party.

Viewers watching the 2019 NFL Draft will see picks announced from a 65-foot tall, 165-foot wide stage constructed over the Cumberland River. In the background, there will be Nissan Stadium and behind the crowd will be the neon lights of the honky-tonks of Broadway.

“It looks fantastic and will look fantastic on TV,” Ivey said. “There’s a house band for the first time, so instead of there just being people making small talk and bantering between the picks we’ll have a band playing.”

Country artists Tim McGraw and Dierks Bentley headline a list of over 20 musical acts scheduled to perform at the NFL Draft.

And just like the uniform reveal that helped springboard Nashville into hosting the big event, the city hopes draft weekend will mean more opportunities in the future.

“People who don’t already understand the draw and power of Nashville will see it on display,” Underwood. “I think it’ll cement Nashville’s attractiveness as a place to come have a good time, and will convince everyone that you can’t throw a better party anywhere than right here in Nashville.”