Tennessee baseball is entering a new era with Josh Elander entering his first season as head coach. But it is also an end of an era for Vol baseball too as Tennessee enters its final season wearing Nike uniforms.
Vol sports are making the move from Nike back to Adidas in July after spending 11 years as a Nike school. While the 2027 baseball season is a long way away, Tennessee has already begun designing its new Adidas baseball uniforms. According to Elander, the new set could include throwback uniforms.
“I think we’re all really excited about kind of the retro options, and I’ve been in touch with Chris Burke and some of the former players,” Elander said on the Mike Keith Show this week. “Chris actually sent me some photos of him playing with kind of a UT interlock and then some great pinstripe. So, again, we’ll work with them as we go, I’m really excited about what the capabilities and what we’ll be able to do there, but I think it’ll be very, very cool as we can kind of mix-and-match with those deals and also kind of give a nod to the past and the former players because they were the last ones who wore Adidas.”
In no sport is Tennessee’s older uniforms more different than the current uniforms then baseball. There’s a lot more black incorporated in the full collection of older uniforms, there’s lighter grey uniforms, pinstripes on both home and away uniforms as well as the interlocking UT that Elander mentioned.
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Nike made a set of new uniforms for Tennessee ahead of the 2025 season. The Vols wore a white uniform with the “Power T” on its chest for Friday night home games. They wore new cream uniforms during two midweek games but did not wear any of the other new uniforms.
The Vols are breaking in more of the updated uniforms this season including slightly lighter grey uniforms and the new cream uniforms full-time on Sunday at home.
“Here’s the backstory on that,” Elander said. “Obviously, when it comes to the cream. We love the Vol script. I think everybody does too, but we were talking with some of the captains over the break. We were in time out a little bit. One thing this year is we got to play a little bit better on Sundays than we did last year.
“But we actually got a new uniform from Nike last year that we wore only one time that’s updated material, more consistent with what the guys are wearing each day and really just better for player performance. So talk with the guys like, ‘hey, what do you guys want to do for this year?’ and the vote was ‘hey, let’s move to the newer, updated ones.’”
Tennessee opens up its 2026 season in less than two weeks when they Nicholls in a three-game series at Lindsey Nelson Stadium beginning on Friday, Feb. 13.
