Rick Barnes is big on tradition.
Well, not all traditions.
With Vanderbilt (10-7, 2-3 SEC) set to visit Tennessee (9-8, 2-3) inside Thompson-Boling Arena on Wednesday (TV: SEC Network, 9:05 p.m.), the first-year UT coach was not overly enthused about traversing the sidelines in an orange blazer.
“I appreciate tradition, but the one thing I don’t ever want is this program to be about me,” Barnes said Monday. “I don’t want people coming to the game wondering if I’m going to wear an orange blazer … I’m not the University of Tennessee basketball program.”
Former Tennessee coach Ray Mears, who coached the Vols from 1962-77, was the first to usher in the tradition of wearing the orange blazer against UT’s two biggest rivals, Vanderbilt and Kentucky.
After Mears left, the orange jacket went away for 28 years before Bruce Pearl (2005-11) brought it back in 2006. Both Cuonzo Martin (2011-14) and Donnie Tyndall (2014-15) wore the orange blazer during their tenures at UT.
Barnes did not completely dismiss the idea of wearing the jacket, stating that one condition could keep the tradition alive. He did, however, mention that he does not have one at the moment.
“If I’m going to do something to ‘bring attention to me,’” Barnes said, “somebody needs to promise me that they’ll auction that jacket to make a lot of money for a charity here in town.”
Barnes, though, has been fond of other past UT traditions.
On Nov. 9, 2015, Barnes announced that the Vols would begin running through the “T” again, a custom that had not occurred in nearly a decade.
But the orange blazer tradition, at least in Barnes’ eyes, diverts the focus from where it needs to be: the university and the players.
If Barnes opts not to wear the orange jacket, it would not be the first time this season he has made a change to put more emphasis on his players.
After the Vols’ season-opener against UNC Asheville on Nov. 13, Barnes asked that his name be removed from pre-game introductions. Barnes’ name hasn’t been announced before a game since.
“I think this is a great university,” Barnes said. “You look at what Chris Lofton did and Dale Ellis, Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King. There are so many more stories about players that should be told, more so than what I wear and what I don’t wear.”
The player-first philosophy is one that Barnes grew used to growing up in Hickory, North Carolina, 149 miles away from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where coaching legend Dean Smith built a program off of that reasoning.
“(Smith) was a guy who, back when press guides were important, never put his face on the front of it,” Barnes said. “When you used to open those press guides up, the first thing you’d open to is the coaching staff, and then the administrators and down the line. He was the first guy to put the players first. I thought that was great because he’s right.”
Barnes is hoping that one day this UT basketball program can resemble Smith’s Tar Heel product in every aspect.
“I don’t want anyone to think I’m disrespecting (tradition), it’s just that we want to take this program to the highest heights it can go, and I think it can go to the top,” Barnes said.
“When it is, I still want it to be about the University of Tennessee and the players because they are the ones that are going to get it there.”
