The Third Saturday in October is about to look the way it was always supposed to.
Tennessee and Alabama will both wear their traditional home jerseys when the two rivals meet in 2026 and 2027, meaning we’ll get Tennessee orange against Alabama crimson on the same field.
And somehow, it hasn’t happened in more than 50 years.
According to ESPN, this will mark the first time since 1970 that Alabama and Tennessee have both worn their primary colors in the rivalry. Before that, it was a longstanding tradition for the Crimson Tide to wear crimson and the Volunteers to wear orange regardless of where the game was played.
Now it’s finally coming back.
And college football needs more stuff like this.
The Third Saturday in October is one of the sport’s classic rivalries, dating all the way back to 1901. Alabama and Tennessee have played some massive games over the years, and the rivalry has started to regain some of its intensity after becoming pretty one-sided during the Nick Saban era.
We’ve already seen how great color-on-color matchups can look in college football. USC-UCLA is probably the best example, with USC wearing cardinal and UCLA wearing blue every year.
Alabama-Tennessee has the perfect color combination to do the same thing.
Crimson vs. orange. Bryant-Denny Stadium or Neyland Stadium. The Third Saturday in October.
It just looks right.
There are plenty of college football traditions that probably don’t need to be brought back.
This absolutely isn’t one of them.
