No. 12 Tennessee will travel to Gainesville this September for an SEC East clash with Florida in The Swamp.
In addition to the game being played under the lights at night, Florida has also announced a fan color coordination event for the home crowd at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
Florida announced on Monday that the Gators’ game against Tennessee on September 16 will be a blue-out for the crowd.
The Gators are taking as much of the color orange out of the stadium as they can. Florida simultaneously announced that the team would be wearing orange helmets, blue jerseys, and blue pants for the night game against rival Tennessee.
Unlike Florida, though, Tennessee waits until the end of each week to announce their uniforms for that upcoming game.
College GameDay was in Knoxville for the meeting between Tennessee and Florida last season on Rocky Top. Tennessee’s crowd checkerboarded Neyland Stadium for the first time in 2022 as Tennessee wore its traditional orange-and-white home look. Florida, on the other hand, went with orange helmets, white jerseys, and blue pants on the road.
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When Tennessee visited Florida for the first time during the Josh Heupel era in 2021, the Vols broke out the orange pants to go along with white helmets and white jerseys. Florida, at the time, wore orange helmets, blue jerseys, and white pants.
Tennessee has four road jersey combinations that they could roll out for the Florida game with the Gators going orange-blue-blue. The Vols used all four combinations on the road at some point last season.
Tennessee could go:
- All-White (White helmets, white jerseys, white pants)
- Orange Britches (White helmets, white jerseys, orange pants)
- Orange Lids (Orange helmets, white jerseys, white pants)
- Smokey Grey (Grey helmets, grey jerseys, grey pants)
NOTE: With Florida going all-blue instead of all-white like LSU did last season, Smokey Grey uniforms seem the most unlikely out of the bunch for this particular game. Can’t imagine all-blue vs all-grey would work out very well.
LSU using an all-white uniform at home against Tennessee last season was unique in a way similar to the Dallas Cowboys using white jerseys at home, despite football being a sport that traditionally sees the home team wear their own color jersey.
Florida will host preseason No. 12-ranked Tennessee at 7:00 p.m. ET on Saturday, September 16 in Gainesville, Florida.
Here’s a look at the announcement from Florida on Monday.
Our 2023 uniform schedule is here 🐊🏈#GoGators | @GatorsEquipment pic.twitter.com/aZB36cx7kA
— Florida Gators Football (@GatorsFB) August 28, 2023