Alabama And Tennessee Are Bringing Back A Rivalry Look College Football Hasn’t Seen Since 1970

College football programs have spent the past decade inventing enough alternate uniforms to make it seem like every equipment room has its own creative agency. Alabama and Tennessee are going in the exact opposite direction by making one of the coolest uniform changes imaginable: wearing their normal uniforms at the same time.

The Alabama Crimson Tide and Tennessee Volunteers will both wear their traditional home jerseys when they meet at Neyland Stadium on Oct. 17, putting Alabama Crimson directly against Tennessee orange for the first time in 56 years. According to Rocky Top Talk, the schools will do it again when Tennessee travels to Tuscaloosa in 2027.

Alabama-Tennessee Is Going To Look Like 1970 Again

This really should not feel as strange as it does.

For years, color-on-color was part of the Third Saturday in October. Alabama wore crimson. Tennessee wore orange. Two programs with some of the most recognizable uniforms in college football simply dressed like themselves and attempted to ruin each other’s fall.

Then the beloved college football tradition disappeared.

The last meeting featuring both home colors came on Oct. 17, 1970, at Neyland Stadium. The official Alabama Athletics records show Tennessee won that game 24-0, one of only five Crimson Tide losses during a bizarre 6-5-1 season.

Since then, somebody has always had to show up in white.

That finally changes this October, and it should produce one of those games where the television broadcast looks noticeably cooler before anybody even takes a snap.

Alabama’s crimson jerseys and helmets against Tennessee’s orange jerseys and white helmets, surrounded by more than 100,000 people turning Neyland Stadium into a giant creamsicle, should be spectacular.

Apparently the revolutionary uniform idea for 2026 was dressing both teams like themselves.

The Rivalry Survived The SEC’s Scheduling Makeover

The timing makes the throwback look even better because so much around the rivalry has changed.

The SEC moved to a nine-game conference schedule beginning this season, but Alabama-Tennessee survived as one of each program’s protected annual matchups. The official Alabama schedule release lists Tennessee alongside Auburn and Mississippi State as the Crimson Tide’s three annual opponents through the current scheduling cycle.

Tennessee gets Alabama, Kentucky and Vanderbilt every season.

So the Third Saturday in October is not going anywhere, even if the actual calendar occasionally decides to disrespect the nickname.

Tennessee hosts this year’s meeting, while the official Tennessee schedule rotation sends the Volunteers back to Alabama in 2027. Both games are set to feature the home-on-home look.

College football could probably use more of this.

USC and UCLA have spent years demonstrating how great rivalry games can look when both teams wear their primary colors. Alabama and Tennessee have two color schemes that nobody with functioning eyesight is going to confuse, and the entire point of a rivalry this old is supposed to be leaning into the traditions that make it different from another random Saturday.

The Third Saturday in October already has more than a century of history, victory cigars, and enough mutual hatred to power several small Tennessee towns.

Now it gets the colors back too.

It only took 56 years.