Tennessee football: ‘Orange Out’ for Alabama makes no sense

Who on earth thought this made sense? Tennessee football has restored plenty of traditions the past two years, from black jerseys to the Smokey Greys to Checker Neyland to the V-O-L-S letters going back on top of the stadium.

However, they are starting a new one Saturday, and in all honesty, it doesn’t make any sense. UT is doing an “orange out” for Saturday’s game against the Tide. Essentially, everybody is told to wear orange in the stadium.

This all started with conversations on Twitter the Sunday after Tennessee football defeated the LSU Tigers 40-13. Danny White was tweeted at to make it official Monday morning. He confirmed that it would happen later in the day, and the Checker Neyland Twitter account also revealed it.

Props to White for listening to fans, as he has done all year, but this is the most ridiculous gimmick he’s done. Newsflash: Neyland Stadium already is orange! Like, every game they play that isn’t Checker Neyland is an orange out except for the one visiting section from the fans.

In what universe would this game be any different for the Vols? They’ll still have orange all over the stadium except the Alabama section, where a group of people will be wearing crimson. Honestly, White seemed to know this when it was first suggested.

Why would White and the Vols be aware of this fact but still move forward? Honestly, the smarter move would’ve been to save the Smokey Greys for this week instead of last week against LSU and then do a grey-out. That would’ve looked epic.

Something else they could do is a black-out, with last year’s black jerseys back, when they host the Kentucky Wildcats the weekend before Halloween. All of these make more sense than Tennessee football doing an orange out.

To be fair, this isn’t the most ridiculous thing a home team has done against Alabama this year. Two Saturdays ago, the Arkansas Razorbacks did a “red out” game when hosting them. There’s one glaring problem with that, though.

Alabama has its own shade of red, so the Hogs doing that didn’t make it clear whether or not they or Alabama fans filled up the stadium. That was a massive fail, and while the orange out won’t be that bad, it’s still redundant.

If you’re going to put a design in your stadium based on what fans wear, you can’t have it simply be the main color the team wears. There needs to be a contrast, either a white-out, a blackout or, potentially in the case of the Vols, a grey-out.

Of course, you can’t blame White for trying on some things. He’s doing as much to inject flare back into the program as Josh Heupel has done with his offense, and some things are naturally going to be swings and misses with all the effort he puts in.

That doesn’t change the fact that Tennessee football doing this makes no sense. They’re asking fans to wear what they would usually wear to the stadium. Book it. You’re not going to see much of a difference on Saturday.