Tennessee's Smokey Grey alternate uniform is coming back, with some new designs to follow in later seasons as the look becomes a more annual staple for the Vols. It was last worn during the 2017 season, but will be back this fall with new editions of the uniform to be unveiled in 2023, 2024, 2025 and possibly beyond.

Here's a look back at Tennessee football's alternate uniforms and uniform changes in recent years:

Tennessee on Thursday announced that its “Smokey Grey” alternate uniform is coming back as part of a series of new uniforms in future season. T he original Nike version of the “Smokey Grey” uniform, first worn during the 2015 season, will be worn again this fall in at least one game, while new designs will be unveiled each of the next three seasons in the the Smokey Grey Series.  “Each design honors Tennessee’s unique tradition and innovative identity,” the Vols announced.

Tennessee in August 2021 announced the addition of a black alternate uniform dubbed "dark mode." It featured an all-black jersey with orange numerals, black pants with two orange stripes and a white helmet with black accents, including a black face mask and black surrounding the helmet stripe and Power T. The Vols wore the uniform twice, in a home win over South Carolina and in a loss to No. 1 Georgia. It was Tennessee's first time wearing a black jersey since former head coach Lane Kiffin had his Vols in a black jersey for a win over South Carolina on Halloween night in 2009.

It’s always news when Tennessee football makes even the slightest changes to its football uniform. After four months with no sports during the coronavirus pandemic, it felt even bigger in 2020 when the Vols announced in a video on Twitter that their pants would return the dual-orange stripes for the 2020 season.

Coming soon. pic.twitter.com/qE3eqxq8CV

Going back to the two-stripe pants was another move toward a more traditional uniform.

The Nike era, which began in July 2015, ushered in the Smokey Grey alternate uniform set, which featured grey pants, grey jerseys and an alternated grey helmet that featured the Smokey Mountains behind the traditional orange power ’T.’ But then-head coach Jeremy Pruitt went away from that look after taking over at Tennessee, going for the more traditional orange and white look. 

The Vols at the time mentioned the idea of wearing an alternate black uniform against Kentucky during the 2020 season, but the new look didn't materialize until a year later.

"I don't know about helmets,” then-Tennessee assistant coach Tee Martin said in a radio interview in June 2020, discussing the possible one-off uniform changes. “I think the plan is to have black uniforms, for sure. But with the orders, it being such a short notice and the way things are with (the COVID-19 pandemic), some of these companies are backed up and I don't know if they can turn it around.”

When the Jeremy Pruitt era started at Tennessee, the Vols ditched the previous single stripe on the pants, wearing either solid white or solid orange pants since the start of the 2018 season. When Nike took over Tennessee’s apparel contract in 2015, a single stripe that ended in a checkerboard pattern was added to the teams’ pants — an orange stripe on white pants and a white stripe on orange pants.

Pruitt explained his decision to go away from the Smokey Grey alternate uniform while speaking at a recruiting celebration after National Signing Day in 2018.

“Well, I’m going to tell you this: When I grew up, when I associated Tennessee, I associated orange and white,” Pruitt said in February 2018. “I’m not trying to be disrespectful at all. But, to me, when you go play a football game, what color your uniforms (are) don’t really matter. So, when I think of Tennessee, I think of orange and white. I don’t think you need no gimmicks.”

Nike and Tennessee unveiled the new look for the football program in 2015 with a design overhaul. The number font changed, the single solid/checkerboard stripe was added to the pants and the helmet stripe added a checkerboard pattern on the back of the helmet. The Smokey Grey alternate uniform was unveiled, along with the grey helmet. ‘My All’ was embroidered on the inside of the collar on the back of the jersey. The grey helmet was Tennessee’s first helmet change since former head coach and longtime athletic director Doug Dickey replaced block numbers on the side of the helmet with a ’T’ in 1965. In a more subtle change, the Nike jersey template after the 2016 season went from the Mach Speed template to the Vapor Untouchable template.

The Smokey Grey uniform worn in 2015 represented just the fifth time the Vols didn’t wear orange at home. There was a white throwback jersey in 2004 against UNLV, which featured orange shoulders. Later came a black jersey worn against South Carolina in 2009 and the grey adidas jerseys worn in 2013. Tennessee wore grey under Zora G. Clevenger in 1914 while going 9-0.

adidas updated the Tennessee football uniform set in August 2013, with changes to both the home and road uniform as well as the introduction of the initial grey alternate uniform. The adidas TECHFIT uniforms added a checkerboard pattern inside the orange numbers. The white jerseys eliminated the black outline around the orange numbers and featured a Power T above the name plate on the back and Tennessee written above the numbers on the front. The orange jerseys featured an outline of the state of Tennessee above the nameplate on the back. Both the orange and white pants featured dual stripes. The uniform set included an adidas TECHFIT base layer worn under jerseys which also featured a checkerboard pattern.

The three new uniforms were unveiled in front of reporters inside the Peyton Manning Locker Room before the start of the 2013 season. Justin Worley, Zach Fulton, A.J. Johnson, Justin Coleman and Curt Maggitt modeled the new uniforms during the unveiling.

"We are excited at our lineup of adidas uniforms for Team 117 this season," former head coach Butch Jones said at the time. "The Smokey Gray uniform is a great addition for our program, and we believe will help our current and future student-athletes add to the strong tradition we have here at Tennessee.”

A second version of the adidas grey uniform was made but never worn. It featured orange checkerboard on the shoulders and ended up being worn by a youth team in Israel. The New England Patriots tweeted a picture of the uniform being worn in 2017 while representatives from the franchise along with 18 football Hall of Famers were part of an ambassador trip overseas.

Tennessee kept a more standard look during the Derek Dooley era. There was a black adidas logo centered above the block numbers on both the home and road jerseys. The white jerseys still had the black outline around the numbers and both the white and orange pants featured two stripes. Orange pants became a more common sighting during Lane Kiffin’s season in 2009 and continued under Dooley. Tennessee wore orange pants at Georgia, South Carolina, Memphis and Vanderbilt in 2010 and at Florida and Kentucky in 2011 and at Vanderbilt in 2012. A white jersey with an orange collar, and a white Power T centered at the front of the collar, was worn at times during the 2010 and 2011 seasons, along with a white jersey with a white collar.

On the sideline, of course, was perhaps the most bold fashion statement during the Derek Dooley era — his orange pants. They were a product of John H. Daniel, the men’s custom tailor in Knoxville, and took the town by storm … until Dooley’s record started heading south.

"The folks behind the pants at John H. Daniel put a lot of work into making sure the pants turned out just right,” John H. Daniel’s Joe Taylor told WBIR during the Dooley era. “The tailors looked around until they found two yards of woven wool in England and dyed it three times to get the exact color of UT orange.

"We took it in his closet and we matched it to the rest of his game gear, and I said, 'Are you sure this is... spot on?" So we ran with it. Like I said, we're waiting for the mill to open back up so we can dye some more cloth, so if he needs more, we'll be able to produce them for him.”

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