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Three Tennessee fans begin each season with trip to Gen. Robert Neyland’s grave

Every year, shortly before a new football season begins, a few friends who attended the University of Tennessee stop by Knoxville National Cemetery on Tyson Street. This is where they visit a West Point graduate who is interred in Section X, Grave 16A.

A simple headstone reads that this is the final resting place of Robert Reese Neyland. He is, of course, best known in the college football world as General Neyland.

“He pretty much… he made the history of Tennessee,” says Steven Mackey, a two-time graduate of the University of Tennessee. “We have this huge tradition that everybody talks about, and it is because of him.