The JumboTron is a 44-foot by 28.5-foot video screen placed in the south end zone of Neyland Stadium in 1999. The board weighs 275 tons and is supported by a 132-foot by 51-foot superstructure. More than 600 tons of steel were involved in the construction. Footings for the structure are buried 52 feet deep, and more than 350 tons of steel were used in its supports. It has two stationary 32-foot by 15-foot ad panels and four turning 15-foot by 15-foot signs that can show three ads each.
Discussion of a giant scoreboard and replay board began in early fall 1998 when UT began to work with StadiaNet, a company that had installed devices in several stadia. After Action Sports Media of Portland, Oregon, acquired StadiaNet, contracts had to be revised and technology reconsidered. Action Sports Media partnered with UT and paid for about 85 percent of the approximately $7.5 million project. The video board was the first Sony LED (light-emitting diode) outdoor replay board in the country. It had nearly nine hundred thousand individual points of light. Ray Bell Construction Company of Brentwood, Tennessee, was the prime contractor.
The JumboTron was installed between June 14 and September 4, 1999. It was first used at the September 4 night game between UT and Wyoming. A new JumboTron was installed in summer 2009—true high definition—made up of 168 four-foot by five-foot panels, or cabinets. Each of the panels weighed eight hundred pounds. The new JumboTron was a full LED board, 10 stories high, with nearly 4,600 square feet of viewing surface.