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KNOXVILLE - Upon seeing Tennessee's alternate gray football jersey for the first time, Josh Dobbs lit up, laughed and covered his mouth in excitement.
"That's pretty sick," the Volunteers quarterback said in a pre-recorded video shown Wednesday as part of the "Swoosh Show" that Tennessee used to unveil its new uniforms and its new apparel partnership.
Tennessee turned what on the outside seemed like the simple expiry of its contract with Adidas and the start of its new partnership with Nike into a stylish production, hosted by one of its more famous football alums and one of the SEC Network's top talents and featuring a runway you'd see in a fashion show.
"It takes us to another level, in my opinion," Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart said during the unveiling, "because we are now partnered with the best there is in the branding industry. In terms of branding and marketing, nobody does it better - in any facet of the business world - than Nike does.
"I've had the pleasure and the privilege of being at Nike schools in the past, so I know what it's going to mean to us."
Based on the collective reaction of the handful of athletes modeling the new uniforms and the dozens of them on social media, the change is a welcome one.
And it's the athletes who are impacted the most by Tennessee's switch from Adidas, which had been the Vols' apparel provider since 1997. They are the ones who will be wearing the new top-line gear. Their reactions matter most.
"I'm excited," new Vols basketball coach Rick Barnes said, "because the players are excited."
The changes to Tennessee's traditional orange-and-white football uniforms are subtle, but there's a reason Tennessee waited until the end of its show, hosted by former Tennessee defensive back Charles Davis and the SEC Network's Maria Taylor, to unveil the new alternate gray uniform.
It comes with a gray helmet that includes the silhouette of the Great Smoky Mountains and an anthracite (darker gray) shade around the shoulders.
Todd van Horne, Nike's vice president and creative director for football and baseball, said the alternate look got a "big reaction" from the players.
"This is a special game uniform," he added. "You pull this out, it gives them a pump. It gives them that edge when they need it, and that's what a special uniform is about. You play that in with a unique story for Tennessee, and you have something that no one else has."
On the traditional orange-and-white uniforms, the numbers are a little bit larger than they were last season, and solid orange stripes on the helmets and down the side of the pants fade into orange-and-white checkerboard patterns. The Power T logo is back on the hip of the pants.
The Vols again will have four different combinations - orange-on-white, all-orange, white-on-orange and the all-white "Stormtrooper" look - to choose from every game.
It will remain important from Tennessee's perspective to maintain its tradition while also finding a more updated look.
"That's one of the things we wanted to do, to make sure we were innovative, that we stayed up with the times," football coach Butch Jones said. "But we really respect the great tradition that we have here at Tennessee."
Basketball seniors Kevin Punter and Devon Baulkman were two of the players modeling the home white, road orange and alternate gray uniforms the men's and women's programs will have available this season.
After facing off in the third-place game of the Rocky Top League on Wednesday night, both players said they first saw the new jerseys about a month ago, and Punter joked it wasn't easy to act like he hadn't.
"It was definitely hard," he said after scoring a league-record 76 points. "People are asking you, 'Have you seen it?' You've kind of got to be like, 'Not really.' I'm just glad July 1 got here, so everybody is exposed to it and can see it."
Baulkman said he's never really paid much attention to what brand he was wearing, but the alternate gray he modeled was easily his favorite.
"I'm not into jerseys like that, but I love them," he said. "They're comfortable, they're stylish, they're swaggy, fitted. They're really nice.
"I feel like Nike brought a lot of energy today. People were happy, people were smiling. It was great."
Wednesday's unveiling showed Tennessee will continue to adopt smokey gray, the school's official third primary color, as a regular part of its wardrobe two years after it was introduced prior to the 2013 football season.
In addition to the alternate looks for the football and basketball teams, whose uniforms include a large silhouette of the Power T and Lady Vols logos on the back, the anthracite shade of gray pairs with home white uniforms for the baseball, softball, track and field, volleyball, rowing and tennis teams.
There's an increased incorporation of the orange-and-white checkerboard pattern, too. Stripes fade into the pattern on all sets of basketball shorts. For many of the other sports, there's an orange-and-white checkerboard outline of the state of Tennessee on the back or shoulders.
Punter wasn't sure what to expect from Wednesday's unveiling, but he left impressed.
"When I saw Twitter blowing up, I'm (thinking) it's bigger than what I expected it was going to be," he said. "It was real cool. The school's been waiting for this for a while, since last year, of course. Now it's finally here and the gear is beautiful."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.