Tennessee football confirms double-striped pants are back

A uniform change has been confirmed by the Tennessee football Volunteers.

Last week, we wrote about how the official Tennessee football Twitter account teased the return of double-striped pants. Well, it appears that those pants truly are returning, something that will be very exciting for traditionalists.

For the first time since 2014, the Vols will be wearing such pants when they take the field this year. They abandoned them after a nine-year run once they made the switch to Nike in 2015, Butch Jones’ third season on the job.

Under Jones, Tennessee football had a solid orange stripe that tapered off as checkerboards. Jeremy Pruitt returned the pure white pants, which the Vols wore from 1996 to 2001 and then 2003 to 2005. The return of the striped pants was confirmed on the school’s Twitter account.

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There is legitimate debate over which layout of pants is the best for the Vols. A solid stripe is always bad, dating back to 2002, when UT started the year ranked No. 5 and suffered through its first unranked season since 1989. They switched back to the pure white pants the next year as a result of that.

After gong 5-6 in 2005 and David Cutcliffe returning as offensive coordinator, the mood was about returning to the 1990s. To help with that, the Vols brought back the striped pants that they had back in those days.

However, with the solid white pants, UT had two SEC Championships in 1997 and 1998, a national championship in 1998, two top five finishes in 1998 and 2001, and five top 10 finishes with 1996, 1997 and 1999 also being on that list. So there was plenty of success there.

When it came to the double-striped pants, the Vols did win back to back SEC titles in 1989 and 1990, and they had a resurgence with them in 2006. However, they also involved the Derek Dooley years and the seven-year drought of no top 25 finishes or seasons with more than seven wins. Abandoning them broke both droughts in 2015 and 2016.

Taking everything into account, the pure white pants appear to be the most successful, so abandoning them may not be the best idea. However, Tennessee football fans always loved the double-striped pants. As a result, this will still likely go over well.