Not so burnt orange? Longhorn fans say new uniforms are more Tennessee than Texas

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Longhorns recently held its annual team photo shoot and something just didn't seem right to Texas fans.

“In five years you won’t be able to tell Texas and Tennessee apart,” one disgruntled fan said on Twitter.

Fans took to social media to express their displeasure with what seemed to be a much brighter shade to of orange, rather than the Longhorns' classic burnt orange.

According to a feature article in Texas Exes' Alcade, the official shade of the Texas Longhorns is Pantone 159 U. (Tennessee's is Pantone 151.)

But it wasn't always that way.

Legend has it, in 1899, Texas trotted out its football team in various combinations of gold, white, orange, and maroon before a poll in 1900 made orange and white the official colors of the Longhorns, according to the article. Not burnt orange and white like Texas fans see today, either. We're talking bright orange and white. The article states Texas donned orange and white on game days for more than 20 years before other universities such as Tennessee started wearing it as well. It was in 1925 where Texas adopted the darker "burnt orange" shade, according to the article.

It’s strange to think, in a world saturated by #Longhorn merchandise, that anyone could think of burnt orange as anything but traditional. It is the color that all die-hard Longhorns proverbially bleed. It is a source of pride and a carefully guarded piece of intellectual property. Burnt orange is synonymous with @utaustintx. But it hasn’t always been that way. Go to the link in bio to read how our particular shade of orange came to be! | 📷: @adamvoorhes + @finlayrobin

A post shared by Texas Exes (@texasexes) on Jul 6, 2018 at 11:24am PDT

Without getting too deep into a history lesson, the point is UT fans are particular and passionate about the color scheme of the Texas Longhorns program. For more on the history of the color scheme, visit the Texas Exes article here.

As far as the color controversy is concerned, Texas Director of Recruiting Bryan Carrington said the difference in shades that fans on Twitter are eluding to is due to a filter.

Here is a look at Wednesday's photo shoot: