After beating the Mississippi State Bulldogs 20-10 this past Saturday, Tennessee football’s verdict is in. The Volunteers should always wear all orange.
In 2013, Tennessee football stepped on the field against the South Carolina Gamecocks with a 3-3 record. First-year head coach Butch Jones had lots of momentum at the time, but the team still did not have a signature win.
The Vols were facing a 5-1 team ranked No. 11 and very much in the SEC and national title race. They had not beaten a top 25 team since the famous black jerseys with orange pants under Lane Kiffin back in 2009. And in this game, they tried the orange pants again.
This time, however, they came out in all orange. Orange jerseys with orange pants had been a bad omen for Tennessee football dating back to the 1980s, and they hadn’t worn them since a home loss to the Auburn Tigers in 2009. But Jones was going to try to break the curse.
He did just that. The Vols scored a 23-21 upset over what was easily Steve Spurrier’s best South Carolina team, a team that went 11-2 and finished in the top five. And that upset win reversed a trend that had existed for decades.
In the next season, Tennessee football came out in all-orange against the Alabama Crimson Tide. They did lose that game after falling behind 27-0 with Nathan Peterman. But when they put in Joshua Dobbs, they made a dramatic comeback to only lose 34-20. That was the coming-out party of Dobbs, and losing to Alabama was a worthy price to pay to see it happen.
One year later, the Vols beat the North Texas Mean 24-0 in those jerseys. It was their first shutout over an FBS school since 2011. Then, the next year at home against the Kentucky Wildcats, they wore them again. And in that game, Joshua Dobbs had a historic performance, throwing for 223 yards and running for 147 with five total touchdowns while the team gained 600 yards overall.
After not using them for two years during the coaching transitions, Jeremy Pruitt decided he needed a splash with a 1-4 start this year, including two losses to Group of Five programs and no wins against an FBS school. So he brought out the all orange against the Mississippi State Bulldogs. And on Saturday, the Vols got a huge upset win over them in the process.
So at this point, the verdict is in. The all-orange is good luck for Rocky Top, and they need to continue wearing it at home no matter what people think of the uniforms. But how did they manage to get to this point?
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Way back in 1999, Tennessee football was defending national champions. At 1-1 and as a 35-point favorite at home against the Memphis Tigers, who had beaten them with Peyton Manning for the first time in program history in their last meeting three years before, the Vols came out with the all-orange, which had not been their home uniform combination since 1984.
It made sense that the Vols stuck with the switch they made to orange jerseys and white pants in 1985. That season, they won their first SEC title in 16 years and had their first top 25 finish in 14 years. So the uniform combination stuck until that outing in 1999. Andit was not likely to comeback either, as UT barely beat the Tigers, winning 17-16.
Fulmer stored those uniforms away, as a result. But he brought them out again in the 2007 SEC Championship. This time, Tennessee football was a heavy underdog to the LSU Tigers, but LSU was playing with a backup quarterback. And they had made a series of mistakes in this game to spot the Vols a 14-13 lead with the ball late.
However, Erik Ainge, a senior quarterback, threw a pick-six. Then he overthrew three straight passes as the Vols got inside LSU territory for a turnover on downs. On his third chance at a TD, he threw an interception on first down in LSU territory. So in all orange, the Vols made uncharacteristic mistakes to lose.
Two years later, Lane Kiffin came around, and Tennessee football wore all orange with a 2-2 record at home against the Auburn Tigers. They lost again, and the verdict then was clear. The all-orange was a bad omen.
What changed? Well, we can trace it back to one event. And it’s that South Carolina game in 2009 that we referenced earlier. On Halloween night, Kiffin shocked the world by rolling out black jerseys with orange pants. The Vols cashed in and won a huge game against a top 25 team.
They have not worn those jerseys since. And under Dooley, they never wore the orange shirts with the orange pants. So we didn’t know about the breaking of the curse. It wasn’t until they wore them against South Carolina in 2013 that we noticed a difference.
It’s clear, though, that the 2009 South Carolina game broke the all-orange curse. So now, the reverse is true, and the Vols should be sticking with that combination for the foreseeable future. Saturday’s win shows there’s no reason for them not to.