Track owner Bruton Smith has said for years he wants to stage a Virginia Tech-Tennessee football game inside 160,000-seat Bristol Motor Speedway.

That dream has apparently been ditched, but Smith has settled for letting Tech coach Frank Beamer race at his place.

In addition to serving as the grand marshal for Sunday's Food City 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race, Beamer will drive a race car Saturday night as part of a group of celebrities competing in 15-lap heat races for the Scotts Saturday Night Special.

The field will include at least one other college football coach, Terry Bowden (North Alabama), and several other football players and TV/radio personalities. The celebrities' finish will help determine the starting spots of their professional driver teammates, who will then run 35 laps in the main event. Beamer's teammate is former NASCAR great Cale Yarborough, who once led all 500 laps en route to a Cup victory at Bristol.

"Is that right?" said Beamer, sounding like a college football coach who had just signed a blue-chip high school quarterback recruit.

"Good to hear that. I know he drives hard. So I need to get him a good starting spot."

Beamer, 63, is a big-time NASCAR fan, and he hopes to get in some hot laps Saturday afternoon in his Late Model Stock car.

"I'm practicing ... ummm bahh ... ummm bahh!," a laughing Beamer said. "I need to get my bearings for this one. We're only going 15 laps, so I ought to be able to do that without knocking down a wall somewhere."

Beamer said he was contacted by Food City representatives about participating in the event.

If the Beamer-Yarborough team wins, $30,000 will be donated to the Herma's Readers program for young school children in honor of Beamer's late mother.

"Food City has been great supporters of our program, so I said, 'yeah, I'll do that,' " Beamer said. "But have you ever done something and said, 'why did I commit to that?' I'm just hoping I'm feeling the same way when I hop in that race car Saturday night.

"I've been to Bristol a bunch of times, and I think you've got to go about 85-90 [mph] just to keep it on the track with high banks. I've driven on the road course at Virginia International Raceway before. Steve Johnson, who played football here at Tech, took me down there. I asked Steve about this and he said, 'well, you just put her to the floor and hang left and you got it.'

"We'll see. I think there's only going to be about five or six of us on the track, and none of us know how to drive so that sounds interesting."

If he doesn't beat anyone else Saturday, Beamer knows he needs to whip Bowden. After all, Bowden's father, Bobby, and the Seminoles have gotten the better of the Hokies since Beamer was hired at Tech in 1987, winning eight of nine meetings.

"Yeah, I'll get Terry," Beamer predicted. "I'll be on his back bumper. I've got to beat those Bowdens whenever I can."