Alternate Tennessee road uniforms created using EA Sports free TeamBuilder feature...okay, so imagine the stripes on the jersey and the pants line up...

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Sparked by the conversation and debate over black Tennessee adidas jerseys being found in retail stores, along with quotes from Al Wilson on the same subject, we proudly bring you Rocky Top Talk's Create Your Own UT Uniform Contest.

Thanks to the magic of EA Sports' free TeamBuilder feature for NCAA Football 10 (in stores in just 12 days), you no longer have to be an artist or a graphic designer to take a shot at creating an alternate uniform for the Vols.  You can create a new look for UT's uniforms using their site in as little as 10 minutes...or spend an entire afternoon wandering through the thousands of different combinations.

So for the next week, we'll be taking submissions from the TeamBuilder software for your best shot at a new-look Tennessee uniform.  Update the home and/or away unis, change the helmet, add some gray or black, whatever you think looks best.  After a week's worth of submissions, we'll poll you the reader on the best ones we receive.  We can't promise that Mike Hamilton or Lane Kiffin will be watching...but perhaps we'll find something here that we can all agree would be a nice improvement on the traditional Vol look...

The winner will receive their choice of a free copy of Rocky Top Tennessee 2009, or a free copy of Bruce Feldman's Meat Market, courtesy of Hooper's personal archives.  Second place receives the other.  So we're not just playing for pride boys and girls. 

How to use TeamBuilder:

• Check out the free TeamBuilder site here
• If you don't have an account with EA Sports, you'll need to register for a free one - no confirmation emails, just a quick registration page
• Once you've registered and logged in, click CREATE A SCHOOL
• From here, you can be as in-depth as you'd like.  Created teams can be saved and then downloaded once the game is released, and you can play with seven other features aside from uniforms.  If you just want to get to the Tennessee uniform creation, you'll want to change the school colors to orange (Tennessee's official color is found in the third row), white, and whatever you choose for the third option (black, gray, or O/W again, etc.)
• Next, click on the LOGO tab to enable access to the Power T.  At the bottom of the screen, select "Choose Existing" and then select Tennessee.
• Now you're ready to go.  Click on the UNIFORM tab at the top of the screen to pull up the main uniforms.  From here, you can go into the helmet, jersey, pants and shoes menus individually and edit to your heart's desire until you have a completed uniform for submission.

How to post entries at RockyTopTalk:

• Get a screencap of your completed uniform (like the one at the top of this post).  The easiest way I know to do this is to use the PrntScrn key, and then open a program like MS Paint and paste the screen into it, then crop it down to size and save.  (Those more comptuer savvy than I, feel free to post other ways to do this)
• Once you've got the image saved, create a FanPost on RockyTopTalk that includes your image in it.
• The contest will run from Thursday, July 2-Thursday, July 9.  We'll post a poll on Friday morning, July 10 with the best entries (or all of them, depending on how many we get) and allow the community to vote on a winner over the weekend.

If you have any questions on how to use any of this, just post them in the comments and we'll be sure to help you out.

Note:  Time updated to bump to the top.  No changes made since initial submission.  --hooper