Texas Longhorns AD gets labelled Republican after word-salad quote on 2023 uniforms

The Texas Longhorns wear one of the most iconic uniforms in college football. Their burnt orange tops and white pants are symbolic with the football team.

Other programmes in Texas, like basketball and baseball, have alternate uniforms, but the football programme does not. Many other colleges also have alternate uniforms, so it was no surprise that there were questions about whether the Longhorns football team would follow suit.

Athletic director Chris Del Conte shot down the idea. Instead of talking about tradition or the meaning of colors, he had a novel way of saying that there will be no alternates, elaborating:

"As long as I'm working for you and I'm working at the University of Texas ... there's two colors, burnt orange and white. If God wanted multicolored sunsets, He'd have made them purple and green. But He didn't. They're burnt orange. ... It's not old. It's not stuffy. It's Texas. It's the best."

Naturally, that brought on quite a few strong reactions, as he focussed the ire of the public on himself rather than anything being discussed about the uniforms. Some branded him a Republican, while others called him colorblind for failing to spot that sunsets come in different colors.

Below is a sampling of some of the reactions on social media:

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How did "burnt orange' become a Texas Longhorns tradition?

One question that belies all traditions is how they came to be. The question here is not much different. While the current brouhaha focuses around maintaining the burnt orange color, how did it come to be part of the Texas Longhorns' traditional uniform?

The story goes all the way to 1885 and to baseball. Texas was playing Southwestern University in baseball, just two years removed from their founding. Gussie Brown, Venable Proctor and Clarence Miller were all waiting at the train station to go and support Texas when it occurred to Brown that there was no way of identifying who their fellow fans were.

Having expressed this sentiment, Proctor and Miller ran to a general store to buy some ribbons. Because they were short of time, they asked the shopkeeper to give them two different colors of ribbons. When he asked the men which colors they wanted, they said any would do, and the shop just happened to have plenty of orange and white. That's how the iconic color combination was born.

How did it become burnt, though? There is another story to that. There have been various shades of orange in Texas Longhorns history. In fact, there was a time when traditionalists opposed making it burnt, saying it contravened their history.

The first time the burnt shade came into being happened in 1925, even though there have been iterations and changes before settling on the current color.

By that time, the Texas Longhorns were officially using orange and white for a quarter of a century. However, other teams had started to use the same color combination, Tennessee being a notable example. So, "The Daily Texan" wrote that the Longhorns needed their unique color.

Coach Doc Stewart noticed another unfortunate problem with their existing orange uniforms. They had a penchant to wear off and become yellowish, giving the Longhorns the unfortunate nickname "Yellow Bellies." However, it was the coach who succeeded Stewart, who got the change done.

Clyde Littlefield took charge of the team in 1927 when he was working on O'Shea Knitting Mills in Chicago. He asked his company for an orange shade made specifically for the Longhorns, which would not wear off. In 1928, the team got their official color from the mills and called it Texas Orange. Today, the burnt orange is codified as the Texas Longhorns' own color as Pantone 159.