tennessee College to Pro: The Champions of Life (2016 Tennessee Vols)

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Mighty programs fall sometimes.  Some of them have a hard time getting back up.  Case in point, the Tennessee Volunteers.  The once-mighty men in dayglo orange have struggled to return to prominence, much like Pitt, Houston and Nebraska.  What the Vols had that those others mostly lacked, however, was one of the first meme coaches...a man who somehow knows how to put players through leadership reps...the man with a 5-star heart...the inimitable Butch Jones, the man who awarded his seniors a championship after losing to Vandy...and forevermore, they are...

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Yeah, I'm not gonna waste any time, leading off is Alvin Kamara.  For UT, where the Saints use gold, I used Smokey gray, and I think I sorta like how this turned out.  For the Saints, I considered going dark gold/white, but I recall a concept I saw a few months ago that I didn't like all that much, so instead I went black/pale gold, and instead of UT's checkers on the back end of the helmet stripe, I attempted to replicate the wrought iron New Orleans is famed for.  

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Next up, the Steelers' Cameron Sutton...in this case, the T isn't nearly as prominent as it'd usually be, as I used the tri-star roundel from the Tennessee flag in lieu of a mock Steelmark.  On the Steelers, the main tweaks are a P on the helmet and their trademark hypocycloids on the helmet and pants stripes.

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Derek Barnett of the Eagles now...on the Tennessee side, there's a method to the madness of the animal mismatch.  Smokey adorns the sleeves, but coon hound ears didn't feel like they'd lend themselves well to substitute for eagle wings.  Enter a raccoon tail, referencing the classic Davy Crockett Rifleman logo.  A bit tough to see, but I did manage to replicate the Eagles' muddy  outline/shadow.  On the Eagles side, I figured I'd emphasize silver more than they presently do, and the pants/helmet striping ends in a wing this time out.

As an aside, what a convoluted mess the Eagles' grays/silvers are...they're almost as bad as the Cowboys there.

 

Not entirely sure who's gonna be next, tbh.  

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Former Steelers backup QB Joshua Dobbs, now with the Browns...the Tennessee side is self-evident: Tennessee orange is where brown would be, gray is where orange would be.  You know how I say some of these switches aren't as tricky as they seem like they'd be?  Yeah, the Browns side was the other way around, it was surprisingly difficult to figure out how I'd pull it off for the simple fact that Tennessee's normal design only uses two colors: orange and white.  The jersey, if I'd done brown/orange, would look very much like the color rush jersey, if not identical....that said, it felt weird without some form of orange.  Thus the orangish cream.

[BobsonDugnutt]

Tennessee-ified Cleveland Browns is the best one on here, great work!

[MCM0313]

What a creative idea for a concept series!

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Former Lions LB Jalen Reeves-Maybin, now a Texan...I figured a canine Texan mock was worth a shot...unfortunately, it ended up looking nothing like a dog.  Not trusting myself to do Davy Crockett instead, the presumably little-used Smokey logo gets some love here.  The Texans' helmet puts their own little-used HT logo to use, and the Texan flag on the end of the striping.  Figured I'd get some red in there via the shoulder numbers, even though the different color numbers thing is something Tennessee's never done.

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After a bit of a delay, the finale of Champions of Life, One Touchdown Club member Josh Malone, who will be looking to exit that club in '22.  On the Vols side, I figured I'd keep the flaming thumbtack as is, only replacing the Titans T with the Vols' T and reorienting the stars to make a V, given that where there's fire, there's smoke.  I'll see myself out.

On the Titans side, I was a bit bored so I opted for white. 

 

Not sure when the next C2P batch will be coming, but this one's finally done.  Now get those leadership reps in, freshman  

[Hawkeye15]

On most of these, I don't love the new Tennessee jersey (must be the gray having to be added in as a secondary color) and I immediately like the Tennessee-styled pro jersey. I'm eager to see more striping treatments on these pro teams. The Saints and Steelers treatments are particularly good and would actually work well as a uniform design for them.

[Discrim]

Fair enough...designs where I can pare the palette down are usually easier than those where I need an additional color for a normally one-color & white team like UT.