For the first 29 years of my life, I didn’t even know there was a color known as UT Orange.
After moving to Tennessee, UT Orange became a color I loathed: it was gaudy, and unflattering, and it was everywhere. I remember lamenting the destruction of a beautiful Mustang slantback I used to see often in Sumner County, because it was painted that hideous color.
And then I met Doug. To prove that the gods have a sense of humor, Doug was a UT fan. Not just a UT fan, he was a UT fan who was born and raised in Knoxville, earned his undergrad at UT Knoxville, and fairly BLED UT Orange. Our second date, officially, was attending a friend’s Halloween party, but the first part of that date was us sitting on his sofa, watching a UT football game.
Doug made it clear that Saturdays during football season belonged to college football. I was already a football fan, but I only watched pro football, and even then I watched only the Titans game each week. I didn’t really care to watch college football, and I sure didn’t care to watch UT football with that hideous orange everywhere. But I liked him, so I watched the game. And the next Saturday, I watched another. And then another. In almost no time, I was hooked for life.
And that became our Saturday routine: watch college football and enjoy each other’s company. If we had something else we needed to do, we’d skip the full day of football, but we NEVER missed a UT game (we recorded it if we weren’t going to be around). It was soon clear that Doug had a serious love affair with all things UT; he had jerseys and pajama pants and slippers and t-shirts and beer glasses and coffee mugs and shot glasses - and he started buying those for me as well.
I quickly became a fan of UT myself (what can I say? His affection was infectious), and soon became a fan of UT basketball too. And that color… that hideous color… I grew to love it, because Doug loved it and I loved Doug. UT Orange even made it into my wedding vows: “I promise to wear UT Orange every Saturday during football season and any time we watch a UT basketball game, even though it’s a terrible color and makes me look corpsey.”
UT Orange helped us create game day rituals: On game days, we always had our morning coffee in our UT coffee mugs; we wore UT pajamas in the morning, and after showering we’d change into one of our jerseys or t-shirts; we’d have a beer in our (frozen, of course) UT beer glasses; I’d make something special for dinner for game day every week, and opening day was always a very big deal, with something elaborate to celebrate the start of the new season.
When I see UT Orange now, it takes me back to the first UT game we attended together (Florida at UT; fourth row seats on the 50-yard line; it was a really tough game, and we won). It takes me back to sitting in a stadium so loud that I could literally feel the bones in my skull vibrating. It takes me back to the first (and sadly, only) Bowl game we attended together, tailgating with my homemade date nut bread, Doug’s famous deviled eggs, fried chicken, and spiked hot cocoa, freezing our asses off but loving every second of it. It takes me back to our first day in Kauai, when I spotted a tree full of blooms of UT Orange; it felt as though that tree was telling us that we were welcome there.
My house is full of UT Orange: coffee mugs, shot glasses, a blanket, clothes, a Smokey the Hound lamp, hats, and I’m sure I’ll find some more in boxes in the garage. It’s still a hideous color; it still makes me look corpsey. Don’t care; I love it anyway. UT Orange was a big part of the man who changed my life for the infinitely better - until it also changed for the unspeakably worse. If Doug and I had a color, it would be UT Orange.
For the first 29 years of my life, I didn’t know UT Orange even existed. For the next 21 years, I knew it existed and hated it. From the age of 50, and for the rest of my days, it will remain one of my favorite colors. It may not be beautiful or soothing or flattering, but I cannot think of UT Orange without thinking of Doug - and anything associated with Doug is indeed beautiful because of him.
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