ook a little more time, a lot more engineering, a will to make it happen from the fans and the sc | Forum

Fremantles off-season woes have continued after Shane Yarran became the latest player to get caught up in a police investigation. Zapatillas Yeezy Originales .Just days after it was alleged Michael Johnson punched a man in a kebab shop, Yarran has been charged with common assault in an incident that allegedly involved a family member on Sunday.Yarran will front the Fremantle Magistrates Court on December 6, and the Dockers released a statement saying the forward intends to plead not guilty to the charge.Fremantle claim they were only told about the incident late on Tuesday.An allegation of this nature is treated with the utmost seriousness by the club and we will continue to monitor the legal process closely, Fremantle chief executive Steve Rosich said in a statement.Yarran, who is currently on leave, is due to resume pre-season training next week.The 27-year-old was drafted by the Dockers as a mature-age recruit last year, and he booted 10 goals in six games in an impressive start to his AFL career.Yarran had been earmarked for a regular starting role in 2017, but his immediate AFL future is now unclear following the assault charge.Teammate Johnson is being investigated by police after a Bunbury schoolteacher claimed the veteran defender punched him in the head in the early hours of Sunday.The teacher, Tim, has released a video that appears to show Johnson with his pants down around his ankles in a kebab shop in Leederville in inner-city Perth.He said he was filming Johnson when the AFL stars partner took offence and snatched his phone.The 32-year-old Docker allegedly hit Tim in an ensuing argument.CCTV footage appears to show two men being felled by Johnson during the scuffle.Johnson, who was dressed in a suit at the time, raises his fists after the two men were knocked to the ground.Rosich said Johnson was cooperating fully with inquiries into the incident.We are treating the matter seriously and we are very disappointed that Michael placed himself in such a situation last weekend, Rosich said.In this instance the position Michael placed himself in, including his alleged behaviour, was not acceptable. As a club we support the person and challenge the behaviour.Thankfully, there was not anyone seriously injured.Johnson was suspended for six weeks and dropped from the clubs leadership group in 2010 after being caught in possession of cocaine by police.The 209-game veteran won back his spot in the leadership group earlier this year, but that position is now on shaky ground.Johnson managed just four games last season before a serious knee and hamstring injury ended his campaign.Fremantles 2016 season was wracked by poor form, injuries, and rumours of player unrest.The coaching style of Ross Lyon was also put under the spotlight amidst the rumours of player discontent. Yeezy 500 Comprar España . Irving scored 23 points, Tristan Thompson had 20 points and 10 rebounds and the Cavaliers beat the Denver Nuggets 117-109 on Friday night. Yeezy Powerphase Comprar . -- Yogi Ferrell orchestrates pretty much everything in Indianas offence. http://www.yeezyespana.com/tubular-baratas.html . Barcelonas entertaining victory ensured the defending Spanish champions retained their share of the league lead with Atletico Madrid two rounds ahead of their meeting in the capital. Real Madrid needed a late goal by substitute Jese Rodriguez to earn a 3-2 victory at Valencia to stay in third place and three points behind its title rivals. BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Dave and Dana Sparrow pulled their RV into the campground off Volunteer Parkway on Tuesday, raised their Virginia Tech flag and cracked open a few beers. Theyd spent a week camping in Hillsville, Virginia, then made their way to Bristol with their dog, Ziggy, and a pair of tickets for the biggest game -- in terms of attendance, at least -- in college football history when their Hokies take on Tennessee at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday (8 p.m. ET on ABC).Theyre Virginia Tech lifers. The met there in 1971, and when they found out about the game, Dave paid the entry fee for eight of his friends in hopes of hitting the ticket lottery. One did, and now theyre here.But none of that is why they arrived five days early.I wanted to see the show, Dave Sparrow said.That show has slowly coalesced around them. Down on Volunteer Parkway, a parade of vendors has set up shop. Theres a mobile cocktail bar, a shop selling alligator heads and a food tent whose sign features a pink donkeys exposed posterior between the words Big and Tacos.Down the hill from the Sparrows, three campers from New Jersey are sipping beers. Theyre not rooting for Tennessee or Virginia Tech. They just wanted to see a football game played at a NASCAR track. Some NASCAR fans, Sparrow said, had simply left their campers here since the race three weeks ago and paid the extra storage fees. Most of them have Tennessee flags flying above their RVs and orange and white checkerboard awnings sprawling out over their campsite.But the star of the show, at least at this campsite, is the garbage truck.Donald Greene got the idea about eight years ago. The company he works for, Waste Connections, had retired a fleet of residential recycling trucks, and he thought it would be fun to retrofit the whole thing to serve as a tailgating vehicle. They sandblasted the interior, stripped down the exterior and painted it bright orange. Inside the rear, theres bench seating with a TV hanging on the back wall and air conditioning throughout. Outside there are kegs for beer, a steam table and grill for food and giant goal posts attached to the roof.Price tag on the renovation?Unknown, Greene said.In other words, its best not to ask.Its been a smart investment though. The company takes the truck to every Tennessee home game and hosts clients for tailgates. Fans passing by always want to stop and take a look, and Greene is happy to give tours. Its a show-stopper, which makes for good advertising for the company. Their locations in Oregon and Nebraska are building similar vehicles now, too.In the circus that is the Battle at Bristol, Greenes Tennessee trash truck fits right in.Holston River Brewing, a rustic building tucked between two churches, behind a mountain and adjacent to a campground, just a quarter-mile from the racetrack, has been here for two years. The building used to be a garage for monster trucks, but it was ramshackle and covered in dirt and grease when Sue Doherty bought it in 2013.Doherty has always loved beer, and she liked the history of the building, so she decided to open the brewery here. Now all that remains of the garage are the oversized doors rolled up to create an open-air feel. Theres a stage in the far corner -- karaoke on Wednesday was a hit, and multiple bands are playing through the weekend -- a pingpong table and shuffleboard in the back room. Given its humble beginnings, its a rather upscale affair.Building a customer base has been an ongoing project, though. Disputes over signage make the place tough to find from the highway, and in truth, NASCAR fans havent quite caught on to the burgeoning craft beer experience.They tend to be more of a Bud Light and Mich Ultra crowd, said Deanna Cole, co-owner of the brewery.For those folks, theres the Ale Jr.: a light pilsner named after one of NASCARs most popular drivers, which Cole says is a good gateway beer for the uninitiated. But for the college football fans here this week, theres no need for training wheels.This group is predominantly craft beer drinkers, Cole said of the incoming college football crowds.Thats actually what drew Christian Laourdakis here. He snagged tickets for the game and put his friend in charge of finding a campsite. The campground with the craft brewery was the logical choice.My uncle is coming from Michigan, and he loves microbrews, and we love microbrews, Laourdakis said. So this is a great place to camp for the weekend and get some beers.Thats a boon for Doherty and Cole. The crowds for NASCAR events at the track have dwindled in recent years, but an influx of 150,000 or more college football fans is a needed injection of money into the coffers. Cole guesses this weekends take at Holston River Brewing will exceed the two race weekends combined.Its not just good for us, she said, Its good for all of Bristol.Marla Edwards has been zipping her golf cart up and down the rolling hills surrounding the speedway for 16 years.She gives a quizzical look when asked for her job title, as if its never occurred to her that her role required definition. She started volunteering here 25 years ago and has been an employee overseeing the Medallion Motorcoach Community since 2000, and her job simply boils down to being a veteran of the experience.Ive just been here long enough to answer a lot of things, she said.Edwards was in a bluegrass band when she moved to Tennessee, and the lead singer hooked her up with her first job at the track and she never left. Away from the track, she farms 20 acres of cattle, and her hands are blistered and cut from putting up fence wire last week.This is a break to me, she said. The joke we have is, were ripping the speedway off because wed all work here for free. We love our jobs.Edwards is old-school. She calls NASCARs top circuit the Winston Cup Series, even if that sponsorship has changed twice since 2003, and she prefers to hire older volunteers for race weekends because the kids spend too much time glued to their cellphones. She takes the job seriously, and its easy to see why. As she zooms around the Medallion lot in her golf cart, theres not a guest she doesnt know by name.Theres Beverly Stewart, decked out in Tennessee colors, here to see her team play in personn for just the third time in her life. Yeezy Powerphase España. She comes up from North Carolina for every race though, and she keeps Tootsie Rolls in her RV because she knows Edwards loves them.Edwards stops to pat the heads of the dogs staying with Pam and Dave Norton and their friends. Theyre not college football fans, but theyd made a deal with friends to attend the game in exchange for the rest of the group coming to a NASCAR race. Because their friends have split allegiances, one dog will spend the weekend wearing a Virginia Tech bandanna, the other Tennessee.She makes plans with Don Reynolds, whos been cooking for the Food City hospitality center on race days for 32 years. Hes the real deal, Edwards said, and before she pulls away in her golf cart she reminds him to check in with her when the ribs are ready Saturday.The lot offers space for 200 RVs, but for Edwards, this is like family, and Saturdays game is a unique reunion.Adam Rust has been here since 2005 in myriad roles with the speedway.Ive had no other job, he said. Ive just kind of evolved here.His job now is head of purchasing, which means if the track spends money on something, hes had a hand in acquiring it.For Saturdays game, more than half-million beers were purchased -- a few hundred thousand bottles of water, too. There were custom stools for the locker rooms, mobile showers for the players, tents for VIPs and a few thousand other details that had to be just right.And then there were the really tough items.The infield seating was particularly problematic. The permanent seating capacity is 150,000, but Rust wasnt interested in simply beating the current college football attendance record. He wanted to demolish it, so the quest to install temporary accommodations began. They did sightline studies and crunched the numbers and the plans wavered from as many as 15,000 extra seats down to the current footprint of 5,000 seats. We tweaked it until it couldnt be tweaked anymore, Rust said.The field itself was a feat of engineering, too. For NASCAR races, the infield slopes inward to drain water. That needed to be filled with rocks and leveled off before the turf could go down for the field. At its midpoint, more than 3 feet of rocks were deposited. More than 450 dump trucks were required to deliver the full payload. When Tennessee sent out its engineering crew to finally inspect the field, it measured to within a millimeter of perfection for field quality. Even now, crews are out on the field with scissors, clipping any uneven fibers.Above the field, however, is Rusts biggest accomplishment. Its called Colossus: a four-sided, 700-ton video board that is the rough equivalent of a 13,000 square foot, three-story house hoisted over the playing field by cables as thick as a linebackers arms.Its the center of our universe, Rust said.Given the size of the track, creating a video board capable of bringing fans in the worst seats close to the action was a priority, but it took nearly three full years for the project to come together.Up in the tower along the front stretch, Adam Vahl is monitoring the Colossus technology. Hes actually spent a bit of time inside Colossus itself, hoisted up in a basket 200 feet into a structure he said is actually pretty homey. His company, GoVision, created Colossus, with about 75 percent of it being built on premises at the racetrack, but its the upkeep in the control room that was the real chore. Wires run from one box to another, and lights blink frenetically along a wall of servers and processors. Somehow Vahl keeps track of it all.Its higher than HD, so we had hurdles on the technical side to get through, Vahl said. Its 72 fibers, making sure everything is plugged in correctly. Theres over 3 miles of cable inside there.On game day, a GoVision employee will be up inside Colossus, in constant communication with Vahl to make adjustments or repairs as needed, and the eyes of more than 150,000 fans will be fixated on their work.Fifteen miles away, at a biker bar called Tulips in Johnson City, Tennessee, Robert Hardin sits at the bar and wonders about the prospects for his beloved Tennessee Volunteers after a sloppy Week 1 performance, a 20-13 win over Appalachian State. Hes not planning to attend the game. Its more comfortable to watch from his couch at home. But as the speedway has transformed from racetrack to football stadium, hes tracked the progress online, just to see what it all looks like.Of all the massive accomplishments, this might be the most impressive. The die-hards and the race fans, the tailgaters and the bikers -- theyre all excited just to see how this all turns out.Marcus Smith and Jerry Caldwell have been here nearly their whole lives. Smith is the son of Bruton Smith, who started pushing this idea 20 years ago. Caldwell is the GM of the speedway, whos led the charge on what this game could become.Back in the 1960s, the Eagles and Redskins played an exhibition game at the speedway, and the idea of putting on another football game here has existed in some form ever since.In the mid-1990s, Smith pushed for the game, but the schools werent interested. By the early 2000s, the roles had reversed, but the track couldnt accommodate the game at the time. But the dream never dissipated.The fans wouldnt let us forget it, Smith said. They wouldnt let it die.Now, the campgrounds are filled with RVs. The streets are lined with souvenir shops selling Hokies and Vols gear. Downtown Bristol has been a constant party. Colossus looms over a football field that, for two decades, seemed like a pipe dream.This is Super Bowl-esque, Smith said.Theyre in the business of big events, Smith said, but this one was a little different. It took a little more time, a lot more engineering, a will to make it happen from the fans and the schools and the volunteers around the track and the contractors doing the work to get every little detail just right.After so many years of waiting and planning and dreaming, its a little surreal, Caldwell said, to finally see a finished product.For 20 years its been talked about, he said. And the stars just aligned. ' ' '