Tennessee creates shrine at Peyton Manning statue ahead of Lucas Oil Field Sweet 16 game

Tennessee is pulling out all the stops. Ahead of its Sweet Sixteen matchup Friday night against SEC rival Kentucky inside Lucas Oil Stadium, Tennessee made sure to honor a Volunteers legend who left his own legacy in Indianapolis.

In a video posted to the team’s X/Twitter page Thursday morning, the Tennessee men’s basketball team turned the Peyton Manning statue outside Lucas Oil Stadium into a literal shrine. The Volunteers placed small electric candles, multiple basketball jerseys, and pom-poms, as well as a signed photo of Manning from his playing days in Knoxville at the feet of the 9-foot-tall, 1,000-pound bronze sculpture unveiled in 2017.

Check out the video below. Second-seeded Tennessee (29-7, 12-6 SEC) plays third-seeded Kentucky (24-11, 10-8 SEC) at 7:39 pm ET Friday night on TBS/truTV with a trip to the Elite Eight on the line.

good luck is given

to those who rt the peyton shrine pic.twitter.com/31lTNQLT92

— Tennessee Basketball (@Vol_Hoops) March 28, 2025

Manning, a vaulted member of both the Pro Football and College Football Hall of Fames, remains a diehard Volunteers fan since his days in Knoxville (1994-97). The 1998 No. 1 overall pick routinely returns to campus for sporting events since retiring in 2016 following an 18-year NFL career, the first 14 with the Indianapolis Colts.

Rick Barnes: Tennessee players deserve all the credit for reaching Sweet 16

The Tennessee Volunteers are back in the Sweet 16 this March. It’s a third season in a row getting this deep under head coach Rick Barnes in the NCAA Tournament and actually the first time in program history that the Volunteers made the Sweet 16 in three consecutive seasons.

After beating UCLA to get to this round again, Barnes took time to reflect on the accomplishment. In doing so, he insisted that it’s the Tennessee players first and foremost who deserve credit for this deep run.

“Again, I just thank God for Him bringing us all together, for one,” Rick Barnes said. “Because we have half a new team, sorta, kinda this year, but it goes back to Zakai [Zeigler] and Jahmai [Mashack], and certainly Jordan [Gainey] has become a part of that core group, and they do come in. I’m glad a year ago that Cade [Phillips] got some time to play. It goes back to leadership with our players. They deserve all the credit. They want to be coached, they know what we as a coaching staff expect from them every day and they know we’re going to try to be as consistent as we can doing our jobs and we want them to do that. It’s just a great testament to these guys that they really do like each other. They care, and they love our fan base.”

— On3’s Dan Morrison contributed to this report.