KNOXVILLE, Tennessee — My name is Ashe Hajek and I recently moved from Colorado to Tennessee to be a news producer at WBIR, but my history with SEC football runs deep.
My dad’s side of the family grew up in Auburn, Alabama, and I feel like orange runs in my blood. So, imagine my surprise when I realized that Tennessee is also orange.
But not just any orange — it's "Tennessee Orange."
I knew when I accepted this job that Vol Nation was going to be a big story, but I never expected it to be this ingrained in the East Tennessee culture.
As soon as I moved to Knoxville, orange was all I could see and "Rocky Top" was all I could hear. I knew with football season coming up, I needed to gain some Vols knowledge if I ever wanted to go to a game.
The first step was meeting with students. Surely, they would have the answers, right? Well, some did.
They knew what type of dog Smokey was, but didn’t know how the breed was chosen. Everyone was wearing orange but no one could tell me why the color was so significant. That was until I met the pillar of Vol Nation knowledge, Bud Ford.
Ford is the University of Tennessee Athletic Department’s historian and he schooled me in Tennessee tradition.
"The color orange goes all the way back to 1891," Ford said. "In 1891, the captain of the team, the first football team, they had daisies that grew on the side of the hill and the daisy was kind of a yellowish color, and so they chose that color."
During our time together, I learned why Tennessee's mascot is a bluetick coonhound, how Rocky Top was created and what it means to be a Volunteer.
"Rocky Top is not really a university song," he said. "When it first came, Rocky Top was the creation of a song. We had two fight songs, 'Fight Vols, Fight' and 'Down the Field.' They were traditional fight songs forever, and our mascot, it's a blue tick coonhound. That's a breed of dog native to this state. In 1953, we had a pep club contest to select a coonhound and so that's how Smokey came about."
When the lesson wrapped up and I returned to campus, I realized that I was not dressed appropriately. Auburn orange did not match the Tennessee orange everyone else wore. So, I went to the VolShop to get the right merchandise.
There I met Tommi Grubbs, a "Vol For Life." That's another saying I had to learn when moving to Knoxville. Grubbs showed me around the shop and talked about the history of the store. It has been selling UT gear for over 150 years?
But it’s not just the checkered overalls or cute vintage tops that the shop sells. It also loves to showcase its history in the community.
Some shirts help foundations in East Tennessee like The Nolan and Courtney Turner Memorial Fund. Some others focus on helping fund education for girls across the country.
Through meeting students and staff on campus, and learning more about the culture of what it means to be a Vol, I think I understand.
All of us have our own stories, our own tales and our own love for football. For UT, being a Volunteer doesn’t just mean wearing orange or knowing all the words to "Rocky Top." Being a Volunteer means being a volunteer.
It means giving back to your community, building strong relationships and being a pillar of support in your community.
Now that I know all of this, I am so happy to be here in Tennessee and to become a true Vol.
Let’s go to a game! GBO!
