
This morning, the Tennessee Volunteers announced they will wear their all-black “Dark Mode” uniforms against SEC rival Kentucky, when the team meet at 7:45 pm (ET) this Saturday night. Despite being BFBS, the uniforms are pretty much the perfect uniform choice for a near-Halloween game.

The team announced the uniforms via a pretty good video, with some nice production qualities. I don’t often ask readers to view the hype videos, but this one might be worth your while.
⚫️#GBO
pic.twitter.com/IMsIILImUt— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) October 28, 2024
This will be the first time this season the Vols have worn the “dark mode” uniforms. Their 2024 season record is 6-1 so far, and they’ve actually worn several different variations of their regular uniforms, plus one special uniform. They’re 1-0 in their “Smokey Grey” uniforms, 2-0 in white/white/white, 2-0 in white/orange/white, and 1-0 in white/orange/orange. Their only loss came against Arkansas, when they went white/white/orange.
To refresh, here’s what the “Dark Mode” uniforms look like:


One of the more interesting things about the uniform is because the school uses orange as a base color, their all-black uniforms are an exact color-swap for their white helmet, jersey and pants — except for one detail.

On the white jerseys, those have a thick orange collar stripe. On the black jerseys, there is no orange collar. That actually aligns with the Tennessee home orange jersey, which is solid in color.
These are not the first black uniforms (or at least jerseys) the team has worn.
Back in 2009, on Halloween, the team debuted a black jersey with their white helmet and orange pants. They defeated South Carolina 31-13.

The black jerseys would disappear for more than a decade, making a second appearance in 2021, when the Vols again defeated South Carolina (45-20) on October 9 of that year. The Vols added a set of black pants, and modified their white helmets with two black stripes and a black facemask.

They would reprise that same look on November 13th, 2021, but this time they fell to Georgia by a score of 41-17.

The “Dark Mode” uniforms in their current iteration made their debut on October 29, 2022 (two days before Halloween) in a game against Kentucky. The team added a black helmet, making the entire Dark Mode uniform all black. The Vols crushed the Wildcats 44-6.

The all-black unis would make one appearance in 2023, again against South Carolina. The game took place on September 30, and once again the Vols emerged victorious, with a final score of 41-20.

So the Vols are 4-1 all-time in black jerseys, and 2-0 in the current iteration. They’ll look to make it 3-0 when they take on Kentucky Saturday night.
As you know, I’m opposed to BFBS, but that doesn’t mean BFBS uniforms — when judged solely as uniforms — don’t necessarily look good. I didn’t like it when the team paired them with white helmets, but once they added the black helmet in 2022, I became a big fan. As a uniform, these are probably the best in college (Miami recently also debuted a really good looking BFBS uniform). If you’re going to do BFBS, at least make it look good. And Tennessee nailed this one.
Your thoughts?
I appreciate the Halloween effort but doing it a few days late reminds me of how the Simpsons Halloween Special always came on the Sunday after Halloween…. for years and years and years
This is the greatest Halloween game I can remember, just because Throwbacks were a new thing …was also a great game
link
While very much a fan of The Simpsons in the 90s, I admit I’m not super familiar with the show beyond that. But researching your Treehouse of Horror-November claim, you are very right. While Treehouse of Horror 1-10 all released in October, the next NINE were all released in early November! Things *mostly* went back to October since then(except for the last two years) but I’ll admit, that’s alot more November releases than I remembered! Bravo
Not a fan since black isn’t a school color, but the mono black is much better than white helmet with black jersey and pants, and the less said the better of the monstrosity that was the white/black/orange combo.
If you have a white helmet paired with pants that are anything besides white your design is totally imbalanced. I know people love the Chargers yellow pants, but this applies to that uniform as well.
Tennessee is very helped out by the fact that black looks really good with their shade of orange, so it still looks and feels like Tennessee. also it’s one of two times they roll out alts a year, so they limit the nonsense and it makes the nonsense feel a little less nonsense-y.
Yea their shade or orange really pops with the black unis. It looks fantastic
Clarke Schmidt, Yankees starting pitcher, not wearing the Starr Insurance patch tonight.
Probably took a uniwatch seam ripper to it prior to the start. That’s what I’d do.
Both teams should scrape those embarrassing, pathetic Strauss decals off their helmets. Forget the World Series, looks more like the Caribbean Series.
Unfortunately Strauss paid a lot of money (still don’t know what they are and will not google them), and as we know, money talks. This just opens the door to ads on helmets during normal season. One reason I hardly watched any ball this year. Just don’t want to deal with the ads all over the place.
With the way he pitched, maybe he should have left it on.
The uniforms are fine. But does anyone else think it’s kind of lame to name these after the setting you use to read your phone in bed?
Every freaking day another program steps up to proudly announce its complete lack of originality.
The hype video was really good.
I do not like Halloween at all (begging for candy in gothic garb, promoted out of peer pressure to join in ALL THE FUN and as another money grab moment), I hate the whole horror culture thing with slasher movies and games (escapism from perceived negativity in real life by getting addicted to even more dystopian, extreme if supernatural violence) and I do not like BFBS or WFWS uniforms but for a BFBS uniform this looks really good. Princeton could and maybe should wear these.