Auburn Wearing White Late in the Season

With LSU wearing white at home like usual nowadays, Auburn didn’t get the chance to break out the white tops that weekend. Also, with Auburn playing five of its first six games of the 2013 season at home, that means the Tigers have worn blue all season thus far. That, the following tweet from @TheTigerTalk, got me thinking- “When was the latest that Auburn wore white for the first time that season?”

Assuming Auburn wears blue against LSU, they probably won’t wear white until October 19th against Texas A&M. Is that some kind of record?

— TheTigerTalk.com (@TheTigerTalk) September 16, 2013

After a little research, and some help from @AU_History, I have discovered the answer!

I went through the Auburn football schedule season-by-season to see when the first away game was. After I documented the date, game number, and opponent, I went through to find pictures of those games. I did not count neutral site games, including the 1984 Kickoff Game vs Miami in New York and the 2012 Chick-fil-a Kickoff Game vs Clemson in Atlanta.

Since 1995, Auburn wore blue in its first away game four different times. In 1995, the Tigers’ first away game was in Baton Rouge versus LSU. LSU, like today, wore white at home then, thus forcing Auburn to wear blue. The second away game was then versus Kentucky in Lexington. And the Tigers wore white. The Kentucky game was played on September 30th, which coincided as the fourth game of the season.

1999 was the next time Auburn wore blue in its first away game. Again, Auburn faced off with LSU in Baton Rouge, and the whites were on hold for another week. On October 5th, the fifth game of the season, Auburn traveled to Tennessee and thusly broke out the all white look.

In 2006, in the second game of the season, Auburn wore blue in Starkville, Mississippi against the Bulldogs of Mississippi State. The next away game, September 28th (week 5), Auburn wore white in Columbus versus South Carolina.

With still a few seasons missing, I contacted @AU_History for some insight. According to him, and what I noticed looking through this, the latest Auburn broke out the white tops was 1982, on October 28th, the seventh game of the season, in Starkville, Mississippi, against the Mississippi State Bulldogs.

If tradition holds true, and assumption is that Texas A&M will wear maroon tops in College Station on October 19th, the seventh game of the season, it will match the latest that Auburn has worn white for the first time since 1982. If, for some reason, A&M decides to wear white, or they allow Auburn to wear blue on the road again, and have a beautiful color-on-color game, it will be another two weeks, when the Tigers travel to Arkansas, that Auburn will more than likely wear white.

In today’s college football world, it is absurd that one team has worn one uniform combination for six weeks straight. Even two or three games in a row is unheard of today. Personally, I would love to see that maroon-on-blue color-on-color game in College Station in a few weeks. Not only would it look amazing on TV, it would completely shatter this (modern era) record. And this isn’t just an Auburn uniform record. With Nike, Under Armour, adidas, and every other uniform manufacturer nowadays, this is a college football uniform record. If there is another team that didn’t break out one of their jersey colors (other than teams like LSU and Georgia Tech that wear white all the time) as late as Auburn has/will, I would love to see it.

War Eagle!