By Tom Mattingly
The year was 1969, and the venue was Neyland Stadium/Shields-Watkins Field. The game matched Tennessee and Vanderbilt in the season finale. Tennessee won 40-27, with the Vols annexing a second SEC title in the past three years.
Losses to Mississippi and Florida down the stretch run of the season, balanced by wins over Kentucky and Vanderbilt, put a damper on a 9-win season. The Vols also lost head coach Doug Dickey to Florida. No one knew what was in store in 1970, but that campaign was one of the best in school history, 11-1 and a victory in the Sugar Bowl. There were consecutive wins over Alabama and Florida in mid-October.
The game coverage from the Knoxville News-Sentinel and other statewide media raised one significant issue from the hard-fought game. With Vanderbilt wearing gold jerseys and Vols decked out in orange, the two teams looked nearly alike. Vanderbilt head coach Bill Pace “suggested” that the Vols might be wearing white in the return engagement a year later in Nashville.
Everyone seemed to think that the Vols would wear white in Nashville in 1970. That didn’t happen. There was a great deal of talk and little action. The subject was never broached.
In the 1972 season finale, it was a cloudy day, and the differences between the two sets of jerseys were more pronounced. Vanderbilt’s jerseys appeared to be a darker hue of gold. As was usually the case, the game was a tough one, the Vols winning 30-10.
In early 1971, the idea of the visiting team wearing white jerseys for road games suddenly became another of those controversies often facing SEC schools. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, particularly those living in Knoxville.
The Vols had worn orange jerseys on the road up until that time. They had also worn white jerseys at home in 1935, as another “Vol Historian,” Allan Spain, tells us.
Orange jerseys on the road ended with an SEC “Gentlemen’s Agreement” in January 1971, giving the home team the choice of taking the school-colored shirts and the visiting team wearing the white shirts, except when the game was at LSU and, for a year or so, at Vanderbilt.
The genesis of the white jersey rule may have come from the Tennessee-Vanderbilt game that day in 1969 at Neyland Stadium. It was a sunny November day, with Vanderbilt in gold, Tennessee in orange. No one could tell the difference between the two teams.
To his credit, Tennessee head coach Bill Battle voted against the 1971 agreement (“You’re darn right I did,” he said when quizzed about it years later), thus defending the honor of the orange jersey.
The Vols did wear orange against Mississippi blue in Memphis in 1974, 1977, and 1980. The 1975 game against the Rebels was one of the more confusing in recent history, with Ole Miss in red and the Vols in orange. There wasn’t a great deal of contrast, and, besides, Ole Miss won 23-6. Ole Miss wore its blue jerseys in Knoxville in 1972 and 1976.
The Vols wore orange against Mississippi State in 1978 in Memphis, when they were the designated home team, playing nearly 400 miles from Knoxville. The Vols wore white when winning at Notre Dame in 1991 and 2001, bringing great joy to Big Orange Country.
Perhaps the most radical change in uniforms came in 1963 under the tenure of Jim McDonald, with a get-up called the “Halloween Uniforms,” so named because the shirts were orange with black and white stripes on the shoulders.
The Vols also unveiled a white version that season, with orange and black stripes on the shoulders, in a 35-0 loss at Alabama in 1963. Those shirts were not seen again.
Over the years there were many exciting moments in the white jerseys. Munford’s Johnnie Jones scored the game-winner in 1983 on a 67-yard run late in the game on a play called “39 option.” That play came on third-and-long at left end.
There was also an 80-yard touchdown pass from Peyton Manning to Joey Kent on the first play of the 1995 Alabama game. Carl Johnson saved the 1971 Kentucky game for the Vols with a deflected pass that he turned into an 87-yard TD run. It seemed that he would run out of gas, but he did have a formidable host of teammates to help him finally get to the Promised Land.
Seasons like these come along when least expected, merging little pieces that come together in exactly the right way. These are the seasons that create memories that last a lifetime. They make fans proud to be fans, regardless of the jersey.
