Auburn travels to the great city of Nashville next week for the program’s third appearance in the Music City Bowl. Round one saw Auburn face Wisconsin in 2003. In 2018, the Tigers faced Purdue for the first time. The 2023 edition will see Auburn pitted against Maryland for the first time in 40 years.
Follow along as we dive into Auburn’s Music City Bowl history and uniform history across the Tigers’ 86-year bowl history.
Uniform History
That first appearance in the Music City Bowl featured Auburn in blue and Wisconsin in white. Tommy Tuberville’s Tiger team ran away with a 28-14 victory after being up 7-6 at halftime. Carnell Williams and Ronnie Brown each scored two touchdowns in Auburn’s first Nashville bowl victory.
Auburn’s return trip to Nissan Stadium in 2018 once again saw the Tigers in navy jerseys. The Purdue Boilermakers countered with their white jerseys combined with gold helmets and pants.
The black stripe on the helmet included one of four words – Tenacious, Tough, Unrelenting, Courageous – on the back end, referring to Tyler Trent, the Purdue student and superfan who passed away in 2019. Trent’s “T2” signature was also included below the text.
Matchup Preview
Bowl games shine when they pit two teams against each other that have either never faced off before or haven’t done so in a long time. Auburn has yet to face 41 of the 133 current FBS teams. Crossing those teams off in a bowl game would always be preferable.
While Auburn’s 2023 bowl game opponent isn’t a new foe, it’s been a long time since they have faced off.
Auburn and Maryland have faced off three times previously. The first meeting in 1952 was played in Birmingham. Maryland would pull out the 13-7 victory. The game saw a beautiful color-on-color matchup, as Auburn wore blue tops as the Terps went with their red jerseys.
The rematch would come six years later in 1958. Back home on the Plains, Auburn would grab the 20-7 win. Then, in 1983, #3 Auburn would play host to #7 Maryland. Terps quarterback Boomer Esiason was great but wasn’t enough to beat Auburn’s three-headed running monster. Tommie Agee rushed for 219 yards and 2 touchdowns, Lionel James ran for 115 yards and a score, and freshman Bo Jackson would tally 105 yards of his own.
A unique feature of this matchup history, from a uniform standpoint, is that Maryland has worn a different uniform combination in each game. White helmets and pants with red jerseys in 1952, all white in 1958, and red/white/white for the 1983 meeting. This trend likely continues next weekend.
The Music City Bowl, like most bowl games, alternates home and away team designations each year. The SEC is set to be the road team this year. Auburn will sport their white tops for the first time in the Nashville bowl and the first time against Maryland.
Sources have confirmed to the Auburn Uniform Database that the Tigers will wear white jerseys in Nashville, though the facemask decision is unclear. Should Auburn stick with white masks, it would cement the first season that Auburn has not worn the traditional navy masks and white jerseys since the 1983 season, the last of the original Doug Barfield orange facemask era.
Maryland is the designated home team and has a few options to wear. The Terapins have fully adopted the throwback look this year, complete with the traditional Terps script helmet decals. The Terps have sported red, black, yellow, and white jerseys this year, with red, black, and white pants available. The helmet shells also come in red, black, and yellow colorways.
The primary look for Maryland this season has consisted of a red helmet, red jersey, and white pants. With confirmation of the Terps’ uniform combination expected late next week, it’s difficult to say for certain what they will wear at this point. However, I do think Maryland will go a little more traditional and keep it red/red/white.
And yes, this would be the fourth different uniform combination in the four games in series history if it holds.
Let’s be honest, I’m just glad I don’t have to mockup the previous set of Maryland flag uniforms for this game.
Field History
Nashville’s Tourism and Visitor Center uses a unique font for its wordmark. The current logo has graced the end zones of the Music City Bowl field since *whenever*. Back in 2003, when Auburn faced Wisconsin, it wasn’t nearly as formal of a design.
The end zones featured large music-symbol footballs in the corners and the city name in the center. The font, however, was a bit different. The Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl logo was placed at midfield with smaller corporate logos set on the 20 yardlines.
Since then, the end zones have been painted in team colors. Sometimes the entire end zone is painted, sometimes with just a small box around the lettering. In 2017, the 20th anniversary of the game, the end zones were painted with a top coat of green, attempting to cover the Titans logos from the weeks prior. The wordmark was then painted in team colors.
The 2018 field had a light layer of green painted over the entire endzone, though the Titans branding continued to peek through. The NFL hashmarks were also still visible. The endzone markings had fully adopted the more modern wordmark design, fully rendered in corresponding team colors.
The Titans decided to replace the natural grass with an artificial turf surface at Nissan Stadium for this season. It’s not entirely clear at the time of writing this how the field crew will handle the bowl game design. Will they simply cover up the Titans marks like in years past?
For the season-opening game between Tennessee and Virginia, the endzones had team-specific designs and the 50 yardline was without a logo altogether. There were no ghosted Titans logos peering through!
With all that in mind, here’s a guess to what we may see next weekend in Nashville.
The decades of Nashville having one of the worst playing surfaces in the country is over. It will be nice to see a quality football field design in Nissan Stadium this go-around.
Bowl History
Auburn football has played in 45 bowl games to a 24-19-2 record. That began back in 1937 when Auburn met Villanova in Havana, Cuba. This was the first game between two American universities on foreign soil. Despite the riots and gunfire raining outside the stadium, the game went on. Auburn led 7-0 for most of the game, but Villanova would block a punt in the closing minutes to tie the game at 7. The Tigers would tie in their first bowl game – and they wore orange jerseys doing so.
Auburn would get their first bowl victory the following season, defeating Michigan State in the 1938 Orange Bowl. It would be 16 years later that Auburn would make another bowl game, facing Texas Tech in the 1954 Gator Bowl. Auburn would wear orange again – Tech would wear red. That would also be the debut of Tech’s Masked Rider mascot.
The Tigers would play in the Gator Bowl for three straight seasons, including becoming the first team to play in the same bowl game twice in the same calendar year. Auburn and Texas Tech faced off on January 1, 1954, following the 1953 season. In an attempt to garner more attention, the Gator Bowl moved to December 31. Auburn would face Baylor on New Year’s Eve 1954. The Tigers would be paired with conference foe Vanderbilt in 1955.
Bowl patches would first appear on an Auburn football uniform for the 1982 Tangerine Bowl when the Tigers faced off against Doug Flutie’s Boston College Eagles. The patches would replace the TV numbers on the shoulders, rather than be placed on the chest as is common today.
This would be commonplace for the rest of the decade, with the 1990 Hall of Fame Bowl being the final occurrence. Twice during the 80s, Auburn would wear a single bowl patch on one shoulder and an SEC Champions patch on the other. A few times, the game patch was actually customized to include Auburn colors and logos.
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More Bowl Game Content
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