An announcement should come in the next day or so on the Tennessee-LSU football game scheduled for Sept. 24 in Baton Rouge, La.

Mike Hamilton, UT men's athletic director, said Tuesday he anticipates the game will be played in Baton Rouge as scheduled.

Due to the impact from Hurricane Katrina, LSU last week postponed its Sept. 3 season-opener and Monday switched Saturday's game against Arizona State from Baton Rouge to Tempe, Ariz.

While Baton Rouge got off easy compared to the devastation in New Orleans, the city and campus are still heavily involved as a recovery site.

"My hunch is that they (LSU officials) want to play the game as scheduled,'' Hamilton said.

"I've been talking with the SEC office the past couple of days. I think there will be an announcement in the next day or so.''

Hamilton said if the game is indeed played at LSU, negotiations will be made with ESPN and CBS to pursue an afternoon kickoff rather than the projected night starting time.

An afternoon game would enable fans to attend the game and have time to drive to hotel rooms away from Baton Rouge, which is swamped with hurricane refugees.

ESPN has first rights to SEC games on that date. Prior to the hurricane, ESPN was expected to announce by Monday that the UT-LSU game would be televised with an evening kickoff.

CBS has the 3:30 p.m. window. Hamilton said he didn't know whether ESPN could still choose the UT-LSU game and play it in an earlier window.

ESPN televises a noon game each Saturday. The network's TV schedule doesn't have a noon game listed yet for that date.

Meanwhile, contingency planning is in the works.

UT hopes to learn soon whether or not hotel accommodations will be available to the team. A block of 100 rooms were reserved at the Executive Center, a Holiday Inn Select property in Baton Rouge.

"Obviously, we're not going to kick anybody out of their rooms,'' Hamilton said. "They're telling us they think some of the people will be thinning out by then.

"If we have hotel availability, we would fly the team down on Friday, then go through our normal process. If we don't have hotel availability, we would probably fly down the day of the game.''

The Pride of the Southland band was scheduled to fly to New Orleans and stay there, an option that no longer exists. Hamilton said UT is exploring going with a larger charter flight that could include cheerleaders and some band.

Fans would be fending for themselves. UT sold 7,500 tickets.

Officials are working toward having Tiger Stadium ready for a visit from the Vols, which would, in effect, be a delayed home opener for LSU.

A $60 million renovation project on the upper deck of the west side of the stadium suffered minimal damage in the hurricane, LSU officials said.

"The impact affected us not physically but more from a work-force standpoint,'' Herb Vincent, an LSU associate athletic director, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "We have all the confidence in the world that by Sept. 24, we'll have a full house.''

The Tigers have an open date on Sept. 17. LSU had hoped to play the Arizona State game at home on Saturday, but was forced to reconsider.

LSU officials hope they won't have to do the same with the Tennessee game.

"It's hard to tell,'' LSU chancellor Sean O'Keefe said Monday. "At this juncture, though, all the signs, all the trends are moving in the right direction.''

Hamilton said moving the game to Neyland Stadium remains an option, but one that would come with a cost in the future.

If this year's game is played in Knoxville, flip-flopping next year's game to Baton Rouge would put the Vols in the unwanted position of playing road games on four consecutive weeks.

The game is scheduled for Nov. 4, 2006, one week after a visit to South Carolina. The Vols play at Arkansas on Nov. 11, and at Vanderbilt on Nov. 18.