Auburn Uniform Oddities: Orange Outlined Numbers

The first portion of this article was originally run on Uni Watch in February 2019.

The second half dives into another Auburn football uniform oddity.

(image via Andy Carpenter, Twitter)

Famed Auburn coach Ralph “Shug” Jordan was no stranger to tweaking Auburn’s football uniforms. When he first took over in 1951, the Tigers wore orange pants. Orange jerseys were worn the next four seasons. Blue leather helmets were replaced with white suspension lids. Jordan oversaw the addition of the Northwestern stripes, gigantic player numbers, and eventually the AU logo on the helmets. And maybe even experimented with a tiger head once before. But there’s one thing that doesn’t get talked about a lot – number outlines.

Throughout the 84 seasons of football uniforms confirmed through photographic and newspaper evidence, never has Auburn worn two-colored numbers. Well, maybe.

In the early 1970s, Shug wanted to give the blue jerseys a bit of a pop, and apparently adding an orange outline to the white numbers was the way to go. With most photos of the era, it’s difficult to tell for sure if and when this actually came to the field. Andy Carpenter, a Twitter follower, once shared photos of his father’s jersey from the era. Lo and behold, there are the orange outlines.

Lee Carpenter played for Auburn from 1971-1974. He was involved in the infamous “Punt Bama Punt” Iron Bowl from 1972. Andy has even shared his father’s jersey from that game. With this criteria alone, it’s easy to narrow it down to 1973 and 1974.

Auburn’s own yearbook, the Glomerata, only has one image from the 1974 season showcasing what could be the orange outlines.

(image 1975 via Auburn Glomerata)

Georgia Tech’s Blueprint yearbook has a few better photos.

(image via 1975 Georgia BluePrint)

That’s all the evidence I’ve been able to gather on this topic. No doubt the orange outlines existed, but it’s difficult to nail down the specific games. There didn’t seem to be much talk about the tweak to the uniforms back in the day either. Newspapers.com, a great asset, doesn’t seem to have any articles with even a mention.

The 1971 A-Day game also featured an interesting football number design. A photo showing the post-game ceremony in which Pat Sullivan would receive the game ball, Tommy Yearout is the subject of the image for our purposes. Take a look:

Yearout was captain of the Blue team for the spring game. As you can clearly notice, the front numbers are orange!

In 1969, Auburn transitioned to the “fishnet” jerseys, with mesh covering the entire front and back of the shirt. That’s why you can clearly see the pads underneath the jersey. These were meant to help the athletes deal with the heat, specifically on Tennessee’s infamous turf field at Neyland Stadium.

But why the orange numbers? And why not have them match the TV numbers on the shoulder?

Well, mismatching TV numbers were nothing new. Ohio State did just that for many years.

The best theory is also the most simple one – it was just a test. Auburn probably wanted to see how legible and effective the orange numerals were during the A-Day game, so they just changed out the numbers on the mesh. No need in messing with the better-assembled numbers on the shoulders.

As mentioned above, Shug Jordan seemingly enjoyed testing things out with the uniforms. The story goes that Jordan wanted an eagle image on the helmets, but it was athletic director Jeff Beard that insisted on the AU letters. And of course the Esso Tiger head that appeared on a helmet. Jordan was head coach at Auburn for 25 years, but didn’t settle on the “traditional” Auburn football uniform until 1966. Many things changed throughout his tenure, including wearing orange jerseys and even orange pants during his first season as head honcho.

While Auburn’s football uniforms have remained rather unchanged since 1966, there are still a ton of unique oddities like these across the program’s history. On this site, we’ve covered the orange outline and orange A-Day numbers as discussed above, the issue of the wrong #2 being used for many years, and the testing of a tiger head image on the helmets, and so much more.

What Auburn uniform oddities should be covered next?

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