Chris Honeycutt arrived on the west roof of Neyland Stadium out of breath and sweating through his black, long-sleeved “UT Pyro Crew” shirt. A stack of cardboard boxes sat at his feet, each weighing just under 30 pounds.
Honeycutt, the Pyro Shows crew leader for Saturdays at Neyland Stadium, walks to look at the north roof. It is the toughest challenge for the crew on game days, stretching around the end of the stadium on a non-flat surface.
He peaks over the knee-high ledge to look to the north roof when he gets a request — can he bring an extra “cheat sheet” to the roof? The paper has the code for which pyrotechnics are loaded and where, color-coding the entire system.
Cutting through the low hum of the fanfare building outside of Neyland Stadium, Josh Massengale, a fellow Pyro Shows employee, yells for Honeycutt to make a paper airplane and toss it down. Honeycutt laughs, using his newfound breath while shaking his head.
Jokes like that aren’t new for Massengale or Honeycutt. The two graduated from Campbell County High School in 2004 and now work together with LaFollette-based Pryo Shows to make the Knoxville sky light up over Neyland Stadium.
There’s a lot that goes into the game-day preparation — beginning four hours before kickoff. Mixed in that day are jokes, football debate and updates about family activities that happened the week before.
It is the highlight of the week for the six-man crew. The path to shooting fireworks wasn’t linear, but the impact of the childhood friends is evident on game days at Neyland, local high schools and around the SEC.
“How crazy is it that we are just a couple of Campbell County boys,” Massengale said. “Everybody likes to bag on Campbell County because we’re the country folk and the ‘Oh, there’s just hicks up there.’ Well, we’re not doing too bad for a bunch of LaFollette boys.”
From combat to Neyland Stadium
Massengale’s journey to the top of Neyland Stadium is one that included a deployment overseas.
Massengale, 38, remembers standing on Shields-Watkins Field, experiencing the Tennessee environment as a member of the color guard during his freshman year of college. The energy and emotion he felt was unmatched in that 2004 game against UNLV, putting any game he watched in the stands to shame.
He didn’t finish college, becoming an active-duty infantryman for the Army in the 101st Airborne Division — the legendary infantry known as the “Screaming Eagles’’ — from Feb. 1, 2006, until his retirement in August 2012 for medical reasons.
During those six-plus years, the LaFollette native sought out Tennessee games on the Armed Forces Network. He watched one game while stationed in Iraq in 2006 and one game each year while in Afghanistan. Phillip Fulmer’s last year, 2008, was the last time Massengale watched a Tennessee game on the Armed Forces Network.
He cheered on his Vols from a war zone and proudly accepted the title from his platoon members as “that hillbilly redneck from Tennessee.” They playfully jabbed him when Tennessee lost, but they never doubted his love of all things UT. Those games, even from halfway around the world, reminded Massengale of the joy he had experienced in Neyland before his deployment.
“It was just that little piece of home,” Massengale said. “We’re 10,000 miles away in the combat zone. It’s like, man, let’s just watch a football game and remember what it’s like just a little bit.”
When Massengale returned to Tennessee in 2012, he enrolled again at UT but quickly realized he wasn’t ready for civilian life. He retreated to a cabin deep in Campbell County, living off the land and fishing daily to get acclimated to life in America again. He knew what he was signing up for when he joined the Army, but he did not necessarily know the sights and smells that would live with him forever.
“It was just kind of a reflection time and trying to make up for lost time with family members from being gone for so long,” Massengale said. “My dad’s retired from the Army, so I saw a lot of advice from him on how to reacclimate.”
One day around March 2013, Massengale didn’t pick up his tackle box. It was time, he decided, to get back to work.
Before and after his Army career, Massengale shot fireworks for Pyro Shows — his hometown pyrotechnics company. That led to an opportunity to shoot fireworks at Tennessee games, joining his Campbell County High School classmate and friend of almost 30 years Honeycutt.
The same team that brought him joy while he faced the horrors of war brought him happiness, just from a different point of view.
“I quite literally started at the bottom of this stadium, and now I’m on the top of it,” Massengale said. “And it’s a bizarre feeling. It’s a very emotional thing for me.”
Creating memorable moments at Neyland
In a 280-acre field near Pryo Shows headquarters, sits more than 100 magazines of firework product. That is where the warehouse team pulls the product needed for the show.
The crew, including Honeycutt and Massnegale, arrives at Neyland Stadium four hours before kick-off. There’s a tedious setup process that goes into preparing the 30 fireworks positions and two cannons for the day.
They’re accompanied by Tennessee Associate Athletics Director of Marketing and Fan Experience Jimmy Delaney — the contact point for Pyro Shows and Tennessee — as they enter the stadium. By the time Neyland Stadium is filling with fans and kick-off is just over 70 minutes away, Honeycutt finally has time to take a break and eat.
At exactly 20 minutes before kick-off, the first firework is launched to begin Tennessee’s pregame light show. Though the laid-back environment among the crew doesn’t show it, there is a level of stress until the first firework is fired.
From there, the show begins at Neyland Stadium.
“Neyland is a place and you want to be there and you want everyone to be sharing on socials so someone else is like, ‘Dang, I got to be there,’” Delaney said. “When fans are having a great time, it’s great for us.”
The university budgeted $125,000 annually from 2021-23 for pyrotechnics, according to documents obtained by The Daily Beacon through a records request. The amount budgeted jumped to $170,000 for 2023-25 — a rise attributed to head coach Josh Heupel’s explosive offense scoring more touchdowns. There was also a rise in pyrotechnics being used at basketball events.
The Daily Beacon requested numbers from all 15 public SEC institutions. Kentucky, for example, spent just under $100,000 in 2021-22 before jumping to $151,730 in 2022-23. The money spent jumped again in 2023-24, rising to $182,438. Texas A&M spent $182,636 in 2022, $183,957 in 2023 and $175.569.
LSU leads the way, spending $186,254 from 2021-22, $226,657 from 2022-23 and $336,487 from 2023-24.
“What I think is cool about us is that kind of comes and goes, but what we have is memorable and a part of it and all of that,” Delaney said. “I’ve always felt really good about what we’ve been doing in Neyland Stadium.”
From playing to shooting
Shooting fireworks, and creating memorable moments, is a rite of passage for Honeycutt.
The Campbell County High School alum decided to start working with Pyro Shows while in college, staying close by to where he grew up. He balanced working in the summer with his football career at the University of the Cumberlands. As a 5-foot-9 linebacker, his path to the field was bumpy.
Honeycutt stayed the course, finally starting for the Patriots his senior year. He used the lessons from football to begin coaching and teaching at Campbell County. He still worked with Pyro Shows when he had time before an opportunity emerged that he couldn’t pass up.
Three years ago, just as fireworks moved inside Neyland Stadium, Honeycutt took a full-time position with Pyro Shows.
“It is pretty cool,” Honeycutt said. “When you sit and think about what we do — get to blow stuff up and get paid for it. That’s every person’s childhood dream.”
While his title is in human resources, Honeycutt acts as the crew leader on Saturdays atop Neyland Stadium. The goal for the crew he leads at Tennessee is simple.
Pyro Shows is there to enhance the environment at Tennessee sporting events while not taking away from the existing traditions. It’s an easy goal for the crew of Tennessee fans to achieve.
“You can’t be local and not be a Tennessee fan,” Honeycutt said. “It’s a lot of fun to be able to get to see a game that you would pay to go to and get paid to see the same game. As a fan, it’s pretty special.”
The local pride extends to high school games as well.
Honeycutt enjoyed pyrotechnics while at Campbell County as a player and a coach. When Justin and Matt Price — a duo that Honeycutt grew up with and coached alongside — went to Grace Christian Academy, they knew who they had to call.
“I think he’s doing them on Grace on Fridays and Neyland on Saturdays — he’s great in what they do and how they organize everything,” Price said. “It’s a well-run company, and those guys do such a good job at it.”
A Friday night at Grace is scaled down from a Saturday in Neyland. Honeycutt will usually use a tower on the field and another location, like the softball field.
Even with the operation scaled down, the product and effects are still the same as that of Neyland Stadium.
“When you’re running through that, I mean, it gives you chills,” Honeycutt said. “You think it gets those guys ready to go.”
The investment in shooting local high schools goes back to Pryo Shows’ roots as an East Tennessee company. While offices have been set up across the Southeast, Pyro Shows’ corporate headquarters is still run out of LaFollette as it had been since 1969.
Fireworks are ignited as Tennessee football takes on Georgia at Sanford Stadium. Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024.
Price saw Honeycutt’s passion and demeanor through their years together. It is something he still sees when shooting at Grace on Friday nights.
“He’s a leader in his church up there and, obviously, a man of faith, and that’s very evident the way he handles himself, the way he built relationships with our employers,” Price said. “… I think that servant heart that he has as a coach is probably the same as over with Pyro Shows.”
Welcome to ESPN
About 20 miles from LaFollette, Anderson County High School is treated to an extravagant fireworks display—the same kind of display that several years ago caught the attention of ESPN.
ESPN personality Ryan McGee recieved sent a video from one of his former UT classmates. It had been sent to him on social media, too, so it wasn’t his first encounter.
The video was of the energetic, firework-filled entrance that Anderson County High School football does for each of its home games. The show — orchestrated by Pyro Shows — played over and over on ESPN’s “Marty & McGee,” bringing national attention to the East Tennessee high school.
“This was like WWE meets Disney World meets Friday Night Lights,” McGee said. “I took it to our ESPN producers and they lost their minds. Sometimes when I send a clip and say, ‘We need to show this on Marty & McGee,’ there are discussions. There was none of that for the Anderson County entrance. It went straight to the show, and the viewers went crazy over it.”
Anderson County’s connection to Pyro Shows is with its head coach, Davey Gillium. His brother, Russ Gillium, works with the pyrotechnic company and is licensed to do some of Pyro Shows’ most intricate events.
Pyro started at Anderson County in 2009 and has evolved into the extravagant show that made the cut for ESPN. Athletic director Gary Terry couldn’t help but smile when he saw the clip on TV.
“You work so hard to make great memories for kids and community and then find something that goes national like that,” Terry said. “And a lot of people across the country that I know and communicate with, other athletic directors in other states, were texting and calling, saying, ‘Hey, we saw you guys on TV.’ That’s unbelievable.”
The birth of ‘Pyro Jesus’
Massengale has taken to social media to spread his unique view of Neyland Stadium on Saturday, spreading the viral moments from a different angle. His account caught on quickly.
His work was noticed by a member of the UT student section at Neyland who posted, “Notre Dame might have Touchdown Jesus, but we have Pyro Jesus.” The post achieved viral status, and Massengale began getting tagged in it.
At first, he was apprehensive of accepting the nickname, wanting to avoid offending anyone. The overwhelming response resulted in an official username change — one Massengale still uses today.
His following grew to over 6,000 overnight.
“I always reiterate, it’s not just me,” Massengale said. “There’s six of us. I’m just kind of the guy that’s got the Twitter.”
Massnegale takes to his X, formerly known as Twitter, every weekend, posting pictures from the top of Neyland Stadium and showing his support to Tennessee. He is clear to mention he does not represent Pyro Shows with his social media presence, but it is bringing a light to the work Pyro Shows does behind the scenes.
Fans show appreciation for Massengale and his crew’s work. He is creating memories people won’t forget, something he knows firsthand. The icing on the cake is he is getting to do it all with his friend of nearly 30 years — quite the journey for a pair of LaFollette boys.
“Never would I have thought as a kid growing up, one day I was going to be running around Neyland Stadium and shooting fireworks for the walls. Never,” Massengale said. “But here I am, and here we are, for that matter.”
