Knee-land or Neigh-land, How Do You Pronounce It?

 

Then-Major Robert Neyland interviewed by CBS Radio's Ted "Mile A Minute" Husing at the 1939 Orange Bowl. In 1939 it was pronounced Neigh-land.

It was 2011, along about the fourth quarter of Tennessee’s game with the University of Cincinnati, when this text message came in to my phone:

“OK …is it Nee-land or Nay-land stadium? Just heard two commentators discussing it.”

The message was from Jo Zimmerman who was watching the game at home on TV.

When I got home, I checked the game film and sure enough ESPN announcers Mike Patrick and Craig James were debating the pronunciation of UT’s Stadium and the nearby Drive. Patrick laughingly suggested that perhaps someone should write a master’s thesis on the pronunciation.

Uh, no need.

When I told Jo the proper pronunciation and that I had answered the question in a column several years earlier, she suggested perhaps it was time to update the column.

I looked it up and I guess it is time to update. It was in 2004 that I addressed the question of how to pronounce the late football coach’s name, and by extension, the stadium and the drive named for him.

When I was at UT in the early seventies, it was always Nay-land Stadium and Nay-land Drive and General Nay-land. But when I moved back in Kingsport in 2002, it was no longer Neigh-land. It was Knee-land.

What happened?

Carol Francisco once told me she had a relative who played football for the General and that he was known then as Nay-land.

Where did the controversy come from?

As it turns out, the coach himself.

To get to the bottom of the controversy back in ‘04, I called the general’s son Bob in Nashville. (Bob died earlier this week at age 93.) Bob lived and worked in Kingsport for 14 years, from 1975 to 1989, serving as a Clerk and Master in the Kingsport office of Sullivan County Chancery Court.

“The family has always pronounced it Knee-land,” Bob told me.

So how where did Nay-land come from? “My dad wasn’t interested, like so many coaches today, in p.r. It was a different time. He never bothered to correct people.”

So, according to the coach’s son, when General Neyland began his tenure as UT football coach in 1926 and people called him Nay-land, he just let it go. And it stuck. For years and years.

1930: R.R. Neyland and his (only) two assistant coaches, Col. Paul B. Parker, line coach who was also Director of Athletics, and W.H. Britton, end coach who also coached basket-ball and track. 

How did it get shifted back to the original pronunciation?

Bob said that goes back to when long-time Voice of the Vols John Ward was a fledgling sportscaster. He supposedly asked General Neyland, then the athletic director, how to pronounce his last name. The General told him that where he came from, Texas, it was Knee-land. So when Ward landed the coveted UT football job in 1968, that’s how he said it.

But that didn’t sit well with two generations of UT fans who were used to hearing it pronounced Nay-land.

Bob Jr. said that after protests from countless UT fans, Ward came up with his own solution to the pronunciation problem. The Vols played in Knee-land Stadium and to get there, you took Nay-land Drive.

1938 football coaches, Blair B. Gullion, J.H. Barnhill, Major W.H. Britton, Neyland, Murray Warmuth and Hugh Faust

 

 

In that same 2011 column I also quoted from a Newsweek story about Apple computer co-founder Steve Jobs and his genius. Among the nuggets in the article was Jobs’ formula for success, which Newsweek called the Ten Commandments of Steve. His commandments live up to his sixth mandate: Simplify.

Here are his Ten Commandments:

1. Go for perfect.

2. Tap the experts.

3. Be ruthless.

4. Shun focus groups.

5. Never stop studying.

6. Simplify.

7. Keep your secrets secret.

8. Keep teams small.

9. Use more carrot than stick.

10. Prototype to the extreme.

 

I was particularly interested in Jobs’ life secrets because I’m a collector of pearls of wisdom from the mouths of geniuses. Not that they’ve helped me much.

One of my favorite formulas (Latin teacher/legend Miss Grace Elmore would insist: formulae) for success comes from oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, who gives this pithy advice in his autobiography “How to Be Rich:”

“Get up early. Work hard. Find oil.”

 

For advice on health, I’ve always liked what my Louisville doctor Steve Wheeler always told me: “The best thing you can do for your health is pick the right parents.”

 

As for personal associations, I try to follow the advice of that great philosopher Groucho Marx, who, according to his autobiography, “Groucho and Me,” sent the following telegram to the Friar's Club of Beverly Hills, where he was a member:

“Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.”

 

John Lennon offered a wry observation about the vagaries of life in his song “Beautiful Boy:”

“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”

Apparently Lennon didn’t come up with that line. He got it from – believe this or not – Readers Digest. In 1957 the magazine attributed the quote to Allen Saunders, who wrote the comic strip “Mary Worth.” (New York Post Broadway columnist Earl Wilson recycled it in a 1963 column.)

 

And when it comes to wry observations Jerry Seinfeld is a master:

“It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.”

 

Whenever I think someone has misjudged me – or any of my friends – I recall the assessment of a studio executive, after watching a screen test of Fred Astaire:

“Can't sing. Can't act. Balding. Dances a little.”

 

And when I hear someone praise a person for a performance, job or otherwise, I think about all the supporting folks who never get the credit they deserve. Like Fred Astaire’s longtime dance partner Ginger Rogers.

It was always Fred and Ginger this and Fred and Ginger that, never Ginger and Fred.

And I think about a line I saw in the comic strip “Frank and Ernest” many, many years ago:

“Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.”

 

Another favorite pearl of wisdom comes from Will Rogers (the actor/newspaper columnist/humorist not the Mississippi State quarterback):

“The difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.”

 

And finally this nugget from my son’s high school basketball coach Jeff Griffin:

“The best places to coach are at an orphanage or in prison. At an orphanage there are no parents. At a prison there are no alums.”

1932: Tennessee 6, Kentucky 6. (I love old ground level photos of football games.)