History and traditions were rarely made on purpose.
You may not have noticed it, but directly below the clock face on Ayres Hall is a checkerboard pattern. Why a checkerboard was placed there, I don’t know. But we do know that before Neyland Stadium was expanded and built up, Ayres was visible from the Shields-Watkins Field. As the story goes, football players were told to charge toward the checkerboards to score touchdowns, as Ayres was visible just beyond the field. When Neyland Stadium was expanded, the pattern was exported to the end zones.
When Ayres was first built, no one could have imagined the checkerboard pattern would be adorned on all sorts of athletic apparel today. But that story gives the pattern much more significance than if someone had simply decided it was appealing, and slapped it on the field.
We have a similar story for our school colors.
In 1889, UT’s athletic association president Charles Moore first wore orange and white to a football game in a nod to the wild orange and white daises that grew on the Hill.
Moore was the first person to wear orange and white, as the school had no official colors at the time. The baseball team, which enjoyed a popularity later seized by football, had red and black uniforms at the time, and UT didn’t have a set color pattern yet. Fortunately for all of us, orange and white won out.
While some people grumble that our school colors are ugly (mostly Vanderbilt fans, I’m assuming), I’d much rather have a color pattern with deep-rooted meaning in our school than a design created by the lowest bidder, someone with no knowledge of UT or our traditions.
And now, more than a century after Moore first wore his suit, thousands of people wear orange and white on Fridays. It’s a well-meaning gesture, but why do it?
In case you’ve never been there, we have a neat page on our website: http://www.utk.edu/aboutut/traditions/, explaining our school traditions and the origins of each one.
While the explanation for “Orange and Big Orange Friday” includes Moore’s story, it also is the only tradition on the page that includes a link to a video. Entitled “The Orange You Need,” the video opens on the VolShop sign in the Student Union and follows a college woman around as she tries on hundreds of dollars’ worth of university apparel, before having her mother buy it all.
How does getting one’s entire wardrobe from the bookstore further an actual tradition?
This video tells us Big Orange Friday is not about the orange daises on the Hill, Charles Moore or supporting UT. Apparently, Big Orange Friday is about buying $100 shirts and checkerboard overalls.
Rather than invoking UT’s rich and storied past as a reason to wear orange, Big Orange Friday is marketing for the university bookstore. Yes, we took the idea of wearing orange for home games and exported it for every Friday, but why? Are we actually commemorating Charles Moore and his daises, or boosting the VolShop’s second quarter earnings?
I doubt the sincerity of any tradition that requires constant reminders for people to participate. We don’t see #PaintTheRock or #PrideOfTheSouthland coming from the university on a regular basis, but we sure do see #BigOrangeFriday.
This weekend is Homecoming, and of course I’ll be wearing orange and white. Not because of some slick marketing video, but because I want to express my love for my school.
If UT is serious about Big Orange Friday, if we are to make this a real, time-honored tradition and not just a way to boost sales at the bookstore, then we can start by not pushing it so hard. I’ve not seen any video advertisements telling us to paint the Rock or buy a boat so we can join the Vol Navy.
Classic, time-honored traditions are not forced; they come naturally. Vol Navy doesn’t have its origins in a slick promotional video; it began when Vols broadcaster George Mooney decided in 1962 to take his boat to the stadium to avoid game day traffic.
To make Big Orange Friday an actual tradition, we can start by not making it every week. Let’s give it a special time of the year, such as football season. And instead of celebrating the brand new orange Nikes in the bookstore, let’s remember the daisies still sitting on the Hill and the man that gave us our school’s colors. This Homecoming, let’s remember what the orange and white is really about.
McCord Pagan is a fifth-year senior in journalism and electronic media. He can be reached at [email protected].
