Knoxville has a lot to offer, but you have to decide if you want to fight the traffic or hangout downtown. It gets pretty chaotic before kickoff and for a couple hours after the game. Uber/Lyft will be hard to come by and if you do find one they charge higher rates due to the demand. Plus you’ll just be paying to sit in traffic. If you wait an hour or so after the game the rates will go down and you should be fine. West Knox has a lot of food and shopping, but in my opinion you should hangout downtown and around the stadium to take in the full atmosphere. There’s quite a few options for parking. I’d park on the outskirts of campus and walk to the stadium. It might be a bit of walk, but it’ll allow you to take it all in and easier to get out after the game. I’d avoid the Cumberland Avenue (the Strip) area as far as parking, but you might want to walk through there to see it.
As far as food, the downtown area has a lot of restaurants and bars. It’s not so much chain restaurants and can be pricey:
Bars: Merchants of Beer, Scruffy City, Balter Beerworks, Suttree’s Tavern, Blackhorse, Downtown Grill and Brewery, Clancy’s, Casual Pint, Barley’s, and others. Hyatt Place just opened recently downtown and has an awesome roof top bar, but drinks are expensive. There are even more bars in the Old City, which is about a 10 minute walk from market square (center of downtown Knoxville)
Food: Stock & Barrel (burgers), Tomato Head (pizza), Cafe 4, Tupelo Honey, Sweet P’s (bbq), Calhoun’s on the River, and Copper Cellar (Cumberland Avenue area) are good places to eat. West Knoxville has all of the chain restaurants and such too if you want to brave the traffic.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any specific questions.
